Strange Territory

The Wizard from the Isles, by Ian Rae; Kennedy & Boyd, 2009, 284 pages, £14.95.
Ian Rae’s strange and compelling novel displays the same lucid, patient, almost mesmerising style familiar from his short stories, published under the name Jack Irvine as In Praise of Younger Women. In some respects the novel is three collections of short stories: the first recounts the childhood of the principal character, Robert Taran, in the islands of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland; the second tells of his adult career, his love affair with an older woman, her death, his subsequent wandering around the world before finally settling in a place where he feels a curious affinity, in France; the third and most startling describes his meeting with other wizards and spirit-projections, who introduce him to his own full capacities as a man with “The Sight” and elemental, subliminal powers, which involve him in various conflicts with wizards given to the Dark Side.

However, such a bald description of the book does no justice to the continuity of pace, the pleasure of curiosity and the qualities of surprise that abound as one reads it. And as it is the first of a promised trilogy, you suspect that the overall shape of the novel will be qualified and altered with its sequels.
Familiarity with the vocabulary of Harry Potter and the Star Wars films does not really help either, for this is a highly unusual novel, mature and measured, yet unafraid to take wild leaps of credibility. It challenges the imagination as it asks you to simply accept the supernatural, the spiritual or numinous world as part of the everyday. Hard-headed materialists will shudder at the effortless acceptance of liminality Rae endorses, yet the novel convinces slowly by its combination of mundane details and ambling narrative.

This is the opposite of a flamboyant, melodramatic, violent novel, however those qualities are present within it, as it takes us from the early twentieth century, through two world wars and into a more contemporary scene, ranging across Scotland, America and Europe. This makes it all the more unusual, unpredictable and difficult to put down.

Descriptions are vivid and convincing. The first part of the book evokes the island world of Scotland’s far western archipelago, a place of deep silences, returning tides and communities of people who seem to know each other’s thoughts and actions as they are taking place. In these communities, the young Robbie senses his father’s and then his own strange powers of insight, healing, and potential to do damage and cause harm to those he believes deserve punishment. He does not always avoid the temptations to exercise his powers in violent retribution for the injustices the world brings upon him as he grows up, but Robbie learns quite quickly to control his temper.

What is exceptionally convincing about this early section is the sense of a listening silence, the way the islands create a theatre of sound and sensual understanding that heightens sensitivity and insight, in those who are capable of having their sensitivity heightened. There are always people for whom cruelty, bullying, sadism and violence will be attractive, and one of the triumphs of the book is to take us from this lonely beginning through a densely populated story without losing that sense of patient self-control, a natural love of learning, self-extension, the pleasures of physical life in sex, the outdoors, conversation, good food and drink.

The sensual pleasures and intellectual exploration of the world inform Robbie’s adult life steadily. He is one of the least flawed characters in recent fiction, untraumatised by the most astonishing incidents and terrible events that befall him and his contemporaries. This steady, patient, assuaging character is nevertheless constantly responsive, alert and sensitive to others. Ian Rae carefully keeps our sympathy with him when he runs the risk of becoming tiresome, complacent or smug. His world is always unsettling itself and the morality tale the novel enacts is an attempt to show us how the unsettling things life brings may be dealt with, hopefully, and with luck.

The central section of the book is a beautifully-written account, set in England, of Taran’s relationship with Judith, the estranged wife of a hypocritical establishment figure, and an older woman from whom he is separated as he pursues his own career. When she dies, his life as an isolated, solitary figure, wandering the world, is confirmed. It is a measure of the novel’s success that the extraordinary acts of violence the wizard brings about are so closely tied to the ordinary, daily, factual matter of the world we more easily recognise. Still, there is considerable suspension of disbelief required when, in the last third of the book, the fellow wizards and evil wizards come more fully into view.
Ian Rae has said that the origin of the book was his own encounter with an old man from the Outer Hebrides of Scotland who claimed to be a wizard and displayed such powers and knowledge that the author’s natural scepticism was allayed.

Probably enjoyment of the book depends ultimately on your ability to go along with him in this trust, but it is an engaging trip and rewarding, affirming the sustaining qualities life affords us, while acknowledging the traps, vulnerabilities and susceptible weaknesses to which everybody is more or less open. Rae’s great predecessor in literary tradition here is John Cowper Powys, whose novels also often open up questions about the relation between the supernatural and mundane reality.
Maybe it’s just that there are inexplicable things. Take that as granted and you may well find yourself ending this novel with a sense of anticipation and curiosity about what Ian Rae will be taking up in its promised sequels.

Alan Riach is Professor of Scottish Literature at Glasgow University. His most recent book of poems, Homecoming, was published by Luath Press in 2009.