Hands in Books: As the Women Lay Dreaming

"Ah, seaman, we've all got choice. The only problem we have in life is recognising these moments when we do" (p.100)

As the Women Lay Dreaming (2018) by Donald S Murray is a series explosions. An explosion of languages to begin with.

"My early life was an explosion of languages. Glaswegian. Doric. Gaelic. All jostling in my head" (p.1)

It is also an explosion of memories triggered by a personal journey. The instability  and disruption will start when Alastair, the narrator, leaves Glasgow to be taken alongside his sister to his maternal grandfather, Tormod Morrison, in Lewis. The vortex of memories swirls down through conversations, journals and sketches and drags us down to the very heart of the narrative, to the fateful 31 December 1918 when hundreds of Royal Naval Reservists from the Isle of Lewis boarded the HMY Iolaire at the Kyle of Lochalsh to return home. In the early hours of 1 January 1919, through the eyes of Tormod, we experience the Iolaire disaster when she piles onto rocks off the coast and 205 men drown in front of their own homes and loved ones. The devastation goes beyond the casualties, leaving those who survived bruised and damaged, with scars, creases and wrinkles in both body and soul.

"It was as if they had stopped being individuals but had, in the face of the enormity of the suffering they had experienced, become something tribal, a crew that had come together in the horror of the previous hours, not allowing any space or distance to come between them, motivated by the fear that if they let any more of their number perish, they might all slip away" (p.77)

It is, finally, an explosion of colour, a wet palette where the different hues are carefully and purposefully arranged and mixed. The cold, grey shades of steel or the buns upon women-heads, the black sheen and stink of oil, the charcoal of black-clothed widows, the steel-blue of Foster's gaze, wounds with shades of night skies, the raw umber of wet timber, the white silence of salt fish. The paint sits on the narrative and its solvent molecules permeate into our heart filling it with a mixture of surliness and sweetness, much like "the shade of the Atlantic Ocean on a dull and overcast day" (p.46).

"Their hands. That's what I remember. The breadth of his knuckles. The smell of smoke - both peat and coal - that pervaded every pore. The blue scars on the back of wrists and hands, the ones that matched the dark star on his cheek. The mat of short white hear spreading out from his wrist to his finders. And her hands too. The way they looked chafed and rubbed almost to the bone" (p.3) 

"Again it was his hands I noticed as he stretched out to lift me from my seat. There was a smattering of dirt on them, a stretch and span that looked like he could grasp potatoes in the gaps between his finders; grow them, perhaps, in the earth crammed below the edge of his nails (...) A deeper, more engrained dirt, contained within his skin" (p.11) 

"It was then I saw the artistry of my grandad's hands, how he used his fingers to create shadows in the light of the peatfire flame" (p.13) 

"It wasn't the only time he felt jealous of Foster. Even a glance at his hands could sometimes trigger his anger - soft and white instead of bruised and calloused, starred with sparks like his own fingers" (p.102)

To know more:

• Read an extract from the novel here
• BBC Podcast where Cathy MacDonald explores fact behind fiction in the novel As the Women Lay Dreaming (available after January 2, 2019 - looking forward to it!)