Music in the Dark

'A wonderful and moving story, beautifully told . . . an episode of history brought vividly to life' Clare Chambers, author of Small Pleasures

Jamesina Ross is long finished with men. But one night a stranger seeking lodgings knocks on the door of her tenement flat. He doesn't recognise her, but she remembers him at once. Not that she plans to mention it. She has no intention of trusting anyone enough to let herself be vulnerable again.

A lifetime ago Jamesina Ross was bent on becoming a writer. She had a facility with words. She made up songs about the Highland glen where she lived and the kin who had worked that land for generations. When her community was threatened with eviction, she gave voice to that too. The women stood together, defiant and determined, but Jamesina's music was no match for one of the most brutal confrontations of the Highland Clearances.

Jamesina has borne the disfigurements of that day ever since, on her face and inside her head. It marked the end of a life of promise and the beginning of a very different one. Her lodger thinks that if she would only dare to open the past, she might have the chance of a future.

A beautiful exploration of unlooked-for love in later life, its contrariness and its awkward, surprising joys, this is a story about resilience, memory, resurrection - and those parts of who we are that nobody can take away.

“Praise for The Sealwoman's Gift: From the first, it leaps from the page... I found myself absolutely persuaded by Asta's extraordinary journey from the harsh Icelandic coast to the strange and splendid palaces of Algiers. I enjoyed and admired it in equal measure - Sarah Perry, author of THE ESSEX SERPENT”

Music in the Dark is a beautifully-written piece of work, achieved with immense skill. The portrayal of Jamesina Ross as she is shattered and put back together by the light-touch constancy of Niall Munro is perfectly balanced. The minute focus on these two individuals tells a huge story of the C19th Highlands, Glasgow and North America that readers will find deeply affecting -- Shona MacLean
An engrossing, beautifully written novel about the Highland Clearances and the long-term physical, emotional and psychological damage done to those who were forced from their homes and homeland. Like all good historical fiction, it both illuminates the past and speaks eloquently to the present -- James Robertson, author of The Testament of Gideon Mack
A wonderful and moving story, beautifully told . . . an episode of history brought vividly to life -- Clare Chambers, author of Small Pleasures
I absolutely loved this book. An important and brutal historical event - but also a tender and unusual love story. It gave me writer envy -- Kirsty Logan, author of The Gracekeepers
Truer to the reality of clearance and what came after than many ostensibly factual accounts of those events -- James Hunter, author of Set Adrift Upon the World: The Sutherland Clearances
Part understated love story and part lament for a people and way of life brushed aside to make way for a more profitable commodity . . . this affecting novel attests to a heartfelt faith in the power of song to heal wounds and keep memories alive Herald
Her best yet . . . Beautifully written and utterly absorbing, it is a fiction fashioned from fact Sunday Post
There is nothing tentative about Sally Magnusson's new novel; it is a fine piece of craftsmanship . . . This is a delightful and sympathetic novel, beautifully written Scotsman
Magnusson tackles the dual timescale with perfect assurance in a beautifully written novel that makes you think and feel at the same time The i Paper
A deeply moving, astonishing and beautiful book. Several times its unexpected twists took me by surprise and I caught my breath . . . What a remarkable, gifted and courageous person Sally Magnusson is, steeped in the power of words, a story teller, driven by conscience, our best commentator on national events. There is nothing sentimental here. It's a wonderful book about hope and the possibility of healing -- Prof Sir Iain Torrance Church of Scotland Magazine

Sally Magnusson's third novel delves again into the experience of women on which the historical record is largely silent - this time placing a Victorian washer-woman of low class, despised race, advancing age and brilliant but injured mind into exhilarating light, and exploring the effect of brutal community displacement. Her debut novel, The Sealwoman's Gift (2018), about the experience of a seventeenth century Icelandic woman abducted into slavery, was shortlisted for 6 literary prizes. The Ninth Child (2020) was acclaimed for its blend of historical realism and chilling folklore. She is also the author of the Sunday Times bestselling memoir, Where Memories Go: Why Dementia changes Everything (2016).

1884. In a tenement room and kitchen in the town of Rutherglen, near Glasgow, a woman with stark injuries to her face and her mind, and a man who has recently arrived from America, spend the night together.As the night progresses, the couple discover that their past lives were once entwined in ways they hadn't realised, and that they are linked by a shared past; the eviction of Greenyards, Strathcarron in 1854. Separately and together the couple reflect on the shocking brutality of the glen's clearance thirty years earlier, exploring notions of love, commitment, trauma and happiness, and discovering what it means to take care of another person's soul.A book suffused with poetry and based on truth, Music in the Dark looks with searing honesty at love in older age - its cost and its beauties - whilst shedding light on female resistance during the Highland Clearances, and depicting, with poignant empathy, the long-term physical and mental effects the past can have on us.

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