Scottish Book Buys from Gallovidia Books

It was lovely to be back at Gallovidia Books in the Artist’s Town of Kircudbright. It’s one of my favourite places to visit because it’s easy to get around and it has a pop-up artists and makers shop which is brilliant for Christmas shopping – sorry, I have started – as well as an art gallery with great exhibits and a cafe where we always stop off for breakfast on our way home. Gallovidia Books is painted the beautiful blue of the bottom book of the stack and is absolutely crammed with books and bookish gifts. It’s a small shop but the selections are so well judged and the recommendations are great. The owners are so friendly, even remembering me from one visit last year, and their book knowledge is second to none. My choices have a very Scottish flavour this time, apart from the last two. All are books I picked on the spot from recommendation or simply from browsing. I can’t recommend this shop highly enough if you’re in Dumfries and Galloway, full of atmosphere and quirky decor.

The Edinburgh Skating Club by Michelle Sloan

I picked this from the historical fiction section and it’s a story based on the painting The Skating Minister. An art historian called Claire Sharp is tasked to find the true provenance of the painting. While in the 18th Century a poet called Alison Cockburn accepts a challenge from her friend Katherine Hume, to infiltrate the all-male Edinburgh Skating Club. Alison will have to live as a man and neither of them could predict how it will affect their future. I love books that celebrate people overlooked by history and this sounds like it’s right up my street.

When on holiday we all have those dreams of upping sticks and moving to our favourite spot. Yesterday I was looking at property in Scotland!! So this was an obvious pick, being about someone also feeling like she needs a change. Ginny is a single mum living in London and has been trying to make it as an artist, despite a promising start she is now barely scraping by. On a whim she applies for an artists residency in Scotland with all expenses paid. She’s shocked to be accepted and is soon on a boat to a remote Scottish island with her daughter. She worries slightly that she’s been hasty in accepting and locals seem to be avoiding her questions about her benefactor. Is this just that they don’t like publicity or are they scared into silence? The place is eerie and she has questions about her contract which states she mustn’t go into the gallery part of the old property. She thinks she hears whispers and is sure that the people in the paintings change overnight. However, as soon as she realises that she’s made a grave mistake will it be too late to escape? I’m looking forward to this spooky read that’s perfect for autumn.

A few years ago I read Caroline Lea’s wonderful novel The Metal Heart which was about the Italian prisoner’s of war on Orkney and the tin chapel they built to worship. So I had to pick up this love story that’s set on the Orkney island of Lamb Holm and the prisoner’s camp 60. Among them is Domenico who is an artist and inspires his friends to create a symbol of peace, building an Italian chapel from scrap. The chapel soon lives up to its symbolism when POW Guiseppe falls in love with a local woman called Fiona. Inside the chapel he hides a token of love that is unveiled for the first time in this book. Based on an incredible true story I’m looking forward to learning more about this special place.

This book is set in another of my favourite haunts, North Wales. Elin returns home to Anglesey after a tragic accident, to the same bay where her mother was drowned ten years ago. I picked this up having just read Doug Johnstone’s latest instalment in his Skelf series that covered a similar subject of ‘grief bots’, an AI generated version of the person who died constructed by scraping all their data from social media and other digital sources. Here Elin agrees to try a grief hologram, but when the avatar says something that shocks Elin she realises that her current loss and the loss of her mother could be related. What if they weren’t an accident? Because if that’s the case she might be in danger…

My final choices are a little bit different and this one was highly recommended. It claims to be like nothing I’ve read before which is an excellent way to grab someone who reads a lot. Written while grieving her mother, it’s more like auto-fiction than a novel and follows what happens when she puts up a wildlife camera in the garden. It captures an image of a strange new animal, low to the ground like a badger but with a flat face and a long trunk like nose. Soon the animals, called mimmoths, are everywhere and no longer he knows where they’ve come from. As sightings spread across the world it seems they are common, harmless but following their own purpose. They won’t take human food and can’t be captured. They are intelligent. The author feels connected to them and becomes caught up in conspiracy theories and global power dynamics. Has grief made the world surreal or is reality changing? I’m intrigued..

My final choice was unexpected but as soon as I saw it I knew it was for me. I have a lot of books by and about the Mitford sisters, even meeting Deborah, the dowager Duchess of Devonshire at one of her book events at Chatsworth. I find the Mitford sisters intriguing and this is a beautiful and unusual book about their complicated and varied lives.

It details each sisters particular history and is so well illustrated by Mimi Pond. As a young girl living in sun-bleached 1960s suburban California, Mimi Pond fell in love with the Mitford sisters. Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah Mitford brought society glitz, pageantry, scandal, and real (rainy) weather to her own prosaic life.

High society debutantes known for rubbing shoulders with some of history’s most infamous fascists and communists, the sisters were also, in turn, gifted writers, inveterate nicknamers, chicken-raising homebodies, scathing wits, and passionate adventurers in the maelstrom of the 20th century. Drawn with inimitable artistic flair and a mischievous affinity for the decadent and grandly declining aristocracy, Mimi Pond brings the Mitfords to life in this glittering and lovingly researched family biography. This is my first graphic book in years and will sit happily on my shelf next to my other Mitford acquisitions.