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Author: M.A. Ross
£10.95
Empty follows Bobby, a nearly forty-year-old woman living in Stornoway whose carefully controlled life begins to unravel as unexpected challenges force her to confront loneliness, mental health and the possibility of change. For readers of contemporary literary fiction about ordinary lives, resilience and small island communities.
dispatched by Royal Mail Tracked 48
M.A. Ross’s Empty follows Bobby, a nearly forty-year-old petrol station attendant in Stornoway who describes herself as a “cheery depressive”. She has built a small, carefully controlled life around familiar…
M.A. Ross’s Empty follows Bobby, a nearly forty-year-old petrol station attendant in Stornoway who describes herself as a “cheery depressive”. She has built a small, carefully controlled life around familiar routines, trusted friends and the Marian Keyes novels that offer more excitement than reality.
What drew me in was the fragility beneath that apparent stability. Bobby sometimes longs for more, yet knows how quickly disruption can overwhelm her mental health. When heartbreak and unexpected change break through the boundaries she has created, she must decide whether remaining safe is still possible, or whether survival might mean risking a different kind of life.
Warm, candid and rooted in the Western Isles, this sounds like a compassionate novel about loneliness, mental illness and the exhausting work of keeping yourself afloat. Bobby’s journey promises pain, humour and the possibility that feeling empty does not mean there is nothing left to rebuild.
As Independent Scottish booksellers, we write all of our descriptions personally, we hope you enjoy this one.
In Stornoway, Bobby has arranged her life to be survivable. A born and bred Lewis girl, a millennial teuchtar, she calls herself a “cheery depressive” and keeps to the small circle she trusts. She has her own place, a steady income, and work at a petrol station, and she has not strayed far from the buttoned up village she left, only ten miles away.
Her days are built on routine and rituals, and on the refuge of Marian Keyes novels, which offer more comfort than reality ever has. She daydreams of a fuller life, but the cost of change feels too high. Any deviation might tip her delicate mental health into something she cannot manage, not after last time, or the time before that.
Then life begins to throw curveballs she cannot avoid. The questions she has kept at bay surface, sharp with fear and longing, as she faces heartbreak and the possibility of being remade.
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£9.95Original price was: £9.95.£7.95Current price is: £7.95.