After she's gone

A deceased Scottish mother and wife tries to figure out why she can’t rest in peace.

- BRIGID FEEHAN

A COUNTRY OF ETERNAL LIGHT, by Paul Dalgarno (4th Estate, $34.99)

“I’m in thrall to stories I’ve already lived through, the main difference being that I can see myself from the outside, and inside …” So says the protagonist Margaret Bryce in Paul Dalgarno’s occasionally bewildering but always engaging A Country of Eternal Light.

Margaret’s stories go back and forth in time and place. In no particular order, we hear about her early youth in Aberdeen in the 1950s, the 1988 Piper Alpha oil rig disaster, the birth of her twin daughters, illnesses, fears and fascinations and her Covid-era visits to her children as adults in Madrid and Melbourne. Mother, dog lover, book lover, hard worker, good friend and wife of the seemingly disappointing Henry, Margaret is also dead.