The Walk Home

Rachel Seiffert became a household name with her Man Booker-shortlisted novel The Dark Room, and her latest offering, The Walk Home, boasts the same ambition and power for which her debut novel was so praised.

This deeply moving tale centres around Protestant and Catholic rivalries in Glasgow — in part during the Troubles in the 1990s and in part, as it is today. In the first of the two eras, newly-wed couple Graham and Lynsey move to Glasgow with their young son Stevie, to start a life near Graham’s family. But Lynsey soon realises the religiously-divided world she fled in Ireland exists in her new life and those tensions soon prove too much for the couple’s marriage.

Fast-forward 20 years and we are thrown into Stevie’s world as he secretly returns to Glasgow for the first time since he cut and run from his family.

Stevie is now an adult, but the dark shadow he left behind still looms over him and that won’t change until he admits he is home.

The phonetically-written dialect takes some getting used to, but it ultimately only adds to the brilliant portrait of Scottish life which Seiffert creates. As heart-breaking as it is heart-warming, this delicate and powerful novel will stay with you long after the final page.