I came to The Weatherhouse with no expectations and no knowledge of who Nan Shepherd was. I was pleased, confused and happy to have had the experience. Shepherd's writing is exquisite and I loved the way she described the world she was creating. This is what storytelling is about and it's a shame she isn't more widely known. Readers who come to this book as I did are in for a real treat.

Thank you for approving me for this title and I'm sorry it's taken me so long to review.

This was an enjoyable read and I would recommend it. thanks for letting me have an advance copy. I'm new to this author.

This is an intense and moving story, and a well-crafted book. Shepherd's writing is wonderful and this is a great read for fans of classic literature.

Although intense and dark, with language that is sometimes tricky to get to grips with, this is a beautifully written book. I’m glad I stuck with it through to the end.

This was a more challenging read than I expected - TV's 'Home Fires' it ain't. But I'm glad I persevered as it was an interesting insight into a particular community and the psychology of its inhabitants at a certain point in time.
The author is no longer with us (she died in 1981), but I shall seek out her other 2 novels, also set in small communities in the north of Scotland.
It's worth buying the 'tree' version. What a glorious cover! (I read it in Kindle format.)

I chose this book because of the cover, which is stunning. The blocks of colours are reminiscent of a golden time, especially in terms of classic old books and detective novels.

Instead, I found a completely different world to what I expected. I hadn't realised this was a story written in 1930, and didn't realise it until after I'd given up reading. It makes a bit of sense that I struggled with the dialect, not realising it was Scottish at all. I thought it was perhaps some type of olden colonial American.

There was a cast of characters at the start, which these days is redundant because an author is expected to be able to introduce her characters well enough for them and their connections to be made obvious and remembered.

I read up to 11% (according to Kindle) and I still hadn't found a storyline. I think a house had an extension built on it to connect it to another house and this extension was the titled 'Weatherhouse'. I struggled with the dialogue because I couldn't understand the dialect. Other readers will hopefully have a better time with it.

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‘He’s eident, but he doesna win through,’ he would sometimes say
sorrowfully. ‘Feel Weelum,’ the folk called him. ‘Oh, nae sae feel,’ said Jonathan Bannochie the souter. ‘He kens gey weel whaur his pottage bickers best.’ To Francie he was still ‘The Journeyman.’
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I have no idea what the above says.

Also, I was frustrated by descriptions of a tale that I couldn't understand.

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"Granny loves a tale. Particularly with a wicked streak. “A spectacle,” she said, “a second Katherine Bran.” Katherine Bran was somebody in a tale, I believe. And then she said, “You have your theatres and your picture palaces, you folk. You make a grand mistake.” And she told us there was no spectacle like what’s at our own doors. “Set her in the jougs and up on the faulters’ stool with her, for fourteen Sabbaths, as they did with Katherine, and where’s your picture palace then?” A merry prank, she called it. Well!—“The faulter’s stool and a penny bridal,” she said, “and you’ve spectacle to last you, I’se warren.” Granny’s very amusing when she begins with old tales.’
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I couldn't understand how Granny was amusing because I didn't understand what she was saying.

There was a particular use of the adjective 'delicious' to describe a room, which irritated me no end. It's probably quite a clever use of delicious to mean tastes good, that then leads on to a room decorated in 'good taste'. Perhaps. All I could think was of someone sitting in ice cream.

What the book is about:
The women of the tiny town of Fetter-Rothnie have grown used to a life without men, and none more so than the tangle of mothers and daughters, spinsters and widows living at the Weatherhouse. Returned from war with shellshock, Garry Forbes is drawn into their circle as he struggles to build a new understanding of the world from the ruins of his grief. In The Weatherhouse Nan Shepherd paints an exquisite portrait of a community coming to terms with the brutal losses of war, and the small tragedies, yearnings and delusions that make up a life.

- I will have to try reading it again at a different pace and with further context. It certainly wasn't for me right now.

Couldn't get into this at all. Couldn't get into this at all.