David Ellison

I didn't worry about what they were eating.

Yes, yes.

Being a vegetarian in early 19th century Scotland would be quite a challenge, I would imagine.

Even now, it's a bit of a challenge.

So they are there and they're exploring their interests.

So this is a kind of unleashing of human potential in an exploratory form, but guided by this kind of erotic, highly charged erotic fascination with the leader of this free-thinking community, a distant figure who we only glimpse naked in a fen.

who is tall and charismatic and someone who has sent them off almost as emissaries and who they await the return of.

And like Godot, he's not showing up.

Yes.

A little bit heavy-handed, I thought.

Also, Lacroix, which of course is French for the cross, has a... Well, he's working under an assumed name because he's aware of the fact that he's being chased and that assumed name is the name of a soldier who perished during the campaign.

His name is Loveall.

So there's the kind of sacrificial cross or Loveall and it's all sorted out through friends.

I don't know.

It's better in its parts than its whole.

That was my takeaway.

I thought there were parts of it that were vivid and beautiful.

Well, there is a general movement towards liquefaction.

So the novel is actually very slowly acknowledging its love of the ocean.

And I think the closer it gets to some kind of expression of freedom, the more time is lavished on the experience of being on the surface of the ocean and actually glimpsing under the surface.