[Review] Elaine Thomson: 'Saltwater'

The Isle of Stroma, 1896. Tom Torrance has been dispatched to oversee the completion of a new lighthouse, a beacon meant to guide ships through one of the most treacherous stretches of water in the United Kingdom. Yet the project has been dogged by mishaps and strange delays, stirring superstitious murmurings among the men. Tom, a man of reason and science, refuses to be swayed by tales of hauntings and ill omens.

I’ve wandered the Shetland Islands myself and felt their raw, windswept desolation. I once sailed the perilous waters between Orkney and Shetland aboard the 'Khasiella' during a vicious northeasterly gale. Even now, living in a harbour town, I can still taste salt on the wind. And I do remember the story of the vanished keepers of the Flannan Isles Lighthouse in 1900, perhaps victims of a creeping loneliness that grew into terror.

After a tragic family experience, Tom Torrance returns to Stroma to finish the lighthouse. But all is not well. Strange accidents happen. Shadows move where no shadows should be. Torrance begins to see figures that cannot be there.

Do the islanders (or the island itself) wish the lighthouse to remain unfinished? Or is Torrance subconsciously sabotaging the work, driven by his longing for the ravishing red‑haired Flora Christie?

My rational mind insists that sleep deprivation, migraines, and whisky on an empty stomach could easily induce hallucinations. Yet I also recall that Midsummer is a time when the veil between this world and the next thins, when powerful old forces stir and wander.

We never truly know what tricks the eye and mind can play, blurring the boundary between illusion and genuine supernatural threat. Haars, those sudden, cold sea fogs, can suddenly cloak the island the island. Visions of the 'walking drowned' may be nothing more than bladderwrack, anemones, or screeching kittiwakes. But they heighten the tension all the same.

This is a powerful novel about a man of science who begins to see things he knows cannot be real. Is Tom Torrance slowly losing his grip on sanity, or is he being manipulated into believing the impossible? And what, exactly, is Flora Christie’s purpose?

Elaine Thomson’s prose captures nature with extraordinary vividness. She can turn a seascape into a living, malevolent presence.

Because I’m not accustomed to horror fiction, I find the protagonists of Saltwater (Tom Torrance) and Thomson’s earlier Hawthorn (Robert Sutherland) intriguingly similar. Both arrive physically or psychologically wounded at their destination. Both begin to see apparitions (or suffer hallucinations). Both are subjected to dubious medical 'treatments'. Both spiral slowly toward madness.

But make no mistake: Saltwater may be part ghost story, part psychological mystery, it delivers brooding Gothic chills, howling gales, and a lingering sense of unease (that remains long after you finish the book). Rarely has the phrase 'atmospheric story' carried such layered meaning. This one truly does. Highly recommended.