Book Review: Novel that explores change, endurance and resistance

Humans lived there for thousands of years, until the community was reduced to unsustainable levels by poverty, neglect and loss.

The last remaining 36 St Kildans were evacuated to live in mainland Scotland in 1930.

The Lost Lights of St Kilda is a powerful evocation of this story and a well-turned novel that explores potent themes of change, endurance and resistance through a dual narrative from the perspectives of two individuals: Chrissie and Fred.

They meet on St Kilda and their differing experience and beliefs are representative of the changes afoot in society at that time, including reflections on the nature of faith and its impact on the individual.

Fred’s story involves escape from occupied France during the Second World War, as a member of the 51st Highland Battalion.

The great courage shown by members of the Resistance movement to help individuals interweaves with the St Kildans’ resistance to leaving their beloved homeland and the lack of effective support to enable them to stay.

Together the stories explore the length’s humans will go to survive and maintain independence.

The sorry loss of the community in St Kilda is told with heartrending clarity: as one more young man leaves, another person dies before their time and the landlord’s rent becomes impossible to find, life on the islands is more and more precarious.

Tired of being gawped at by tourists who don’t understand their nuanced democracy based on shared work and no money, the solace of nature, community and religious belonging cannot manage to sustain the islanders.

“In books you may visit places that you will never see with your own eyes. Although this is the great lesson I have learned from such books, there may be grander or more modern places than our island, but there’s no guarantee that any of them may be happier.”

St Kilda is a remarkable place and the final episode in its history as a homeland, is a tragic tale of the destruction of a minority culture.