An "illuminating and thought-provoking" novel revolving around an academic gathering at a hotel on a Scottish island (Irvine Welsh, The Guardian).

At Willowdale, a Victorian mansion hotel on a Scottish island, a group of English Literature lecturers and students have arrived from Glasgow. They are preparing for a weekend of lectures and intellectual discussions, though some look forward to less studious interactions as well. But as they gather, they don't yet know that this brief weekend will mark a major turning point in the emotional lives of several people, in ways that they never expected, in a novel from a Whitbread Award author that is filled with "deft one-liners [and an] undertow of sadness" (Times Literary Supplement).

"Wonderfully witty and wistful." —The Daily Mail

"The great McIlvanney themes—class, guilt, the power of the book, the difficulty of goodness—are all there, seething under the surface." —The Daily Telegraph)