This brilliant first novel, brimming with humour and charm, is a chronicle of Englishman David Dunlop's mostly incompetent attempts to rise to even the most basic challenges of living in the remote Scottish Highlands. Interspersed with wry cameos from his past life as an aspiring junior executive in southern England, his absurd predicaments not only portray the vast cultural contrast between the English suburbanite and the West Coast Gael, but also highlight his own personal inadequacies. The frustrations of the unsatisfactory marriage, career and materialistic existence he left behind are replaced by equally frustrating new perversities of climate, inanimate objects and West Coast mores. You'll shed a tear from both laughter and pathos as the plot slides from wry humour to a climax of pure farce.