Written with admirable restraint and composed with sturdy,elegant prose, an object lesson in the fact that, sometimes, lesscan be more. Human and moving'
MacIver, military historian and one-time centre for Scotland's rugbytearn, has holed up in his holiday home after his wife's death. Hemakes rules to keep himself going as he and his house crumble away-what he must burn, when he should eat, how to write somethingevery day... As he becomes involved in his story about soildiers in thetrenches of the Great War he begins to reflect on his own expriencesin WWII and the loss of his son in Vietnam, and attempts:to makesense of his rife and the turbulent era through which he has lived.