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'The Witness' - Book Review
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Imagine an independent Scotland of the near future where failed land reform has led to a bloody armed insurrection in the Highlands. The infamous ‘One Acre Act’ and its consequences provide the backdrop for local author James Jauncey’s thrilling new novel The Witness, in which young John MacNeil and the boy known to him only as Ninian are pursued through the wilderness of a neglected Highland landscape. Tense, multi-layered and beautifully written, The Witness is a gripping novel of adventure which is rooted in the history of its setting - the magnificent landscapes of the Scottish Highlands. |
Set in the future, it describes a country riven yet again by occupation and disastrous land reform, calling to mind Scotland’s experience after the Jacobites.
But while Jauncey deftly touches the keys of social and historical resonance, creating layers of meaning and depth, his attention to the business of the storyteller never wavers.
This is a 21st century adventure in the best traditions of Kidnapped or John McNab, an edge-of-your-seat scramble across some of the wildest country on earth, enlivened by the unlikely friendship at its core between John, innocently caught up in cold-blooded murder, and Ninian, the strange, damaged boy who is much more than he seems.
Rich in atmosphere and incident, given weight and depth by the beautifully observed growth of friendship in adversity, The Witness is a thriller which transcends the genre to take in highly topical reflections on the ties that bind us to landscape, history and each other.
James Jauncey is appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Saturday 18 August
by Marc Lambert, Director of the Scottish Book Trust
