It's Elemental my dear...

I've just finished reading Amanda Curtin's epic novel Elemental. When the book was launched by Janet Holmes-a-Court earlier this year, she joked that she had considered giving a box of tissues to the first ten or twelve people that bought a copy. 'Buy it,' she said. 'Read it.' Now I know why. I bought it, but it took me a while to get around to reading it. I wanted to take it away with me so that I would be able to give it the attention it needed.  And deserved.

Even the tears were well-earned. This is Amanda Curtin's second novel, the second that I have read, and I felt with this one, as with the last, that I had just finished a satisfying, beautifully prepared and nutritious meal that has left me wanting for nothing but the hope that it won't be the last.

Elemental is largely told from the point of view of Meggie Tulloch who, as a young girl at the beginning of the twentieth Century, lives as far as you can go north-east of the Scottish mainland, 'closer to Norway than to London'. The story spans several generations of Meggie's family from Scotland to Fremantle, from 1904 to the present day. It is beautifully imagined, and as real as any work of fiction can be. It is about life, the cycle of the generations, patterns of life choices that seem to be almost inherited, and courage and stoicism in the face of adversity. It's a compelling story. It is also filmic in its scale; a work that would easily lend itself to a movie deal. I wonder if anyone will snap it up. Mmn... I hope so. I can already see it in my mind's eye. Great!