As the Women Lay Dreaming - a review for the IndieBookNetwork

 As the Women Lay Dreaming by Donald S Murray (Saraband)

After running a 5 year project during the WW1 Centenary commemorations I've not read too many books set in 1913-1919 but the offer from Bex (Ninja Book Box) to expand my reading of independent publishers with a book set at the very end of the war was too good to miss.

In the small hours of January 1st, 1919, the cruellest twist of fate changed at a stroke the lives of an entire community.

Tormod Morrison was there that terrible night. He was on board HMY Iolaire when it smashed into rocks and sank, killing some 200 servicemen on the very last leg of their long journey home from war. For Tormod – a man unlike others, with artistry in his fingertips – the disaster would mark him indelibly.

Two decades later, Alasdair and Rachel are sent to the windswept Isle of Lewis to live with Tormod in his traditional blackhouse home, a world away from theGlasgow of their earliest years. Their grandfather is kind, compassionate, but still deeply affected by the remarkable true story of the Iolaire shipwreck – by the selfless heroism and desperate tragedy he witnessed.

A deeply moving novel about passion constrained, coping with loss and a changing world, As the Women Lay Dreaming explores how a single event can so dramatically impact communities, individuals and, indeed, our very souls.

I learned about the Iolaire disaster during my centenary project, the loss of a ship bringing men home to the Western Isles from the war within sight of the harbour on New Year's Day 1919 hammered home the utter futility of that war to me.

This book is very clever as the Iolaire disaster is central to the plot, but at the same time not. Ostensibly this is the story of Alasdair remembering a short period in his life when he lived with his grandparents long after the ship went down, but every interaction Alasdair has is coloured by how the war and shipwreck impacted the community.

I found myself immersed in the book and found that I was incapable of putting it down once I'd started it. I liked learning about how life in the Western Isles remained untouched in many ways during WW1 but that the people involved were completely altered, however hard they tried to stay firm with their beliefs. It was such a feast for the senses reading this book, I really could see, hear and smell everything which helps to explain how hard it was to stop reading and return to 2020.

Surprisingly for a book that enthralled me so much I am finding it hard to articulate why, and I am now realising just how many gaps the book has left me with. 

I wanted to spend more time in the family's world and I definitely want to know about all of the female characters whose stories are tantalisingly mentioned but never completed.  There is a lot to be said for a short, beautiful book but I'd have loved this to be a big, sweeping saga and to feel like I was a part of the family rather than someone peeking through the window and listening to snippets of the family's story being told around the fire place.

I'm really pleased I've read this book, and huge thanks to Bex at the Indie Book Network and Saraband for the book, I'm now off to look for more books set in the Western Isles and about HMY Iolaire.