White male heart /

Close friends since childhood, Hugh and Aaron are loners who love the outdoors but feel a strong sense of alienation from the community. The stunning Scottish Highlands where they've lived since birth provide the perfect setting for the bloodthirsty sports the boys love. Then Rebecca comes to their village to recover from a broken love affair. Although both boys joke about bedding her, it is Hugh who lands in a hot affair. Aaron is deeply hurt and angry, and his behavior turns bizarre. When Rebecca leaves Hugh to return to London, the two boys resume their relationship, but things will never be the same. The result is both shocking and horrifying. Nicoll's debut novel is not for everyone--it's what might have been called, in another era, a book for "the man's man." But the disquieting and complex characters, a haunting setting, and disturbingly violent action make it both a repulsively compelling and a chillingly brilliant read for those who favor the genre. Emily Melton

Set in the isolated wilderness of the Highlands in contemporary Scotland, Nicoll's fiction debut captures the raw beauty of the region and the earthy simplicity of life there. The robust clarity of his prose is completely in tune with his subject; the reader can easily understand why young protagonist Hugh MacIntyre both loves his home and feels so restless. Hugh and Aaron Harding, Hugh's best friend since childhood, have been hunting together for as many years as they can remember, mentored by Mac Seruant, an iconoclastic, misogynist poacher. Mac's behavior alone would make him an outcast in Huil, the local village, but the fact that he's black magnifies his ostracism. A pivotal early scene in the novel occurs at a small festival, where Mac's Jack Russell terrier goes for the throat of a gentle whippet that has just won a race. When the local minister, known derisively as "The Rod," upbraids Mac, the poacher shoots his own dog dead on the spot. At the same festival, Hugh meets a cure for his restlessness in the person of Becky, a young woman from London nursing a broken heart. The closer Hugh gets to Becky (his first love), the more resentment Aaron feels, even though he has his own girl, the too-obedient Alison. After Becky makes the mistake of advising Alison to stand up to Aaron, Mac coolly advises Aaron to get rid of Becky. While this threat adds heat and tension to the novel, the depth of Nicoll's characters and the harsh, fully realized natural world in which they move make it as much a coming-of-age story as a psychological thriller. With a breathtaking denouement, it's an auspicious debut. (Apr.) FYI: Nicoll's novel is among the first efforts of this new publishing company in Boston, which also issues mystery and crime fiction under the Kate's Mystery Books imprint. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Scottish author Nicoll's debut is a contemporary Gothic of terrible beauty. Aaron and Hugh are feral young men far more at home in the natural order than in the social world. These lifelong mates meander through the seasons, ranging across the Scottish Highlands, exercising keen predatory dominion over the birds, beasts, and fishes, and making casual mischief among men. Their puerile idyll is disturbed when Becky, a spirited Londoner, rebounds into town and starts occupying Hugh's body, mind, and heart, leaving Aaron alone to refine elaborate blood sports while listening to choral liturgy on CD. Hugh's passionate and giddy coming-of-age story blossoms under this poised menace, mirrored by the capricious skies of an intensely realized northern pastoral that is heaven and hell at once. Nicoll's stew of colorful characters, surreal flourishes (a duel with tampons for bullets), and flashes of brutality as startling as those in Iain Banks's The Wasp Factory or Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy may prove too gamey for some readers, but those with strong stomachs will enjoy. Highly recommended for larger collections.-David Wright, Seattle P.L. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The bleak and beautiful Scottish Highlands mirror a strange triangle--in a frustrating debut. Into the midst of Highland games in the village of Huil go poacher Mac Seraut and his dog Spot--and the Jack Russell paws loose his muzzle and leaps on a winning whippet, tearing out its throat. After that, protagonists Hugh MacIntyre and Aaron Harding carry forward Scottish author Nicoll's rich, knowing, and meticulous rendering of the Highlands as a place of awful beauty where interloping tourists are fools and half-witted residents are religious zealots. The disengaged young men begin with malicious pranks--Hugh's horse chomps down on a tourist's cashmere sweater--and then move on to acts of bloodthirsty violence, culminating in scenes of rape and murder that surpass Patricia Highsmith at her darkest. The catalyst for much of the bloodshed is Rebecca Hume, who, at the games, flirts with Hugh. Sexually insecure, especially when he compares himself to Aaron, Hugh pursues Rebecca (she's visiting the Highlands from London to forget a troubling romantic affair). As the two begin a passionate, sensual relationship, Aaron grows wilder: he even suggests to Hugh that they mine tourists' walking paths with explosives. Eventually, Aaron and Rebecca duel, loading their pistols with tampons--one of several symbolic moments that lands with a thud--and Rebecca's return to London restores tranquility between Hugh and Aaron, who now plan to travel the world together. The exact nature of their comfort with one another remains undefined, but even an armchair analyst will draw some ready conclusions when Aaron ties up, brutalizes, and rapes his girlfriend, insisting he was doing to her what Hugh said he did to Rebecca. Still, Nicoll leaves their relationship ambiguous, perhaps as a meditation on the treacherous border between friendship and love that the two men tread. Against a startling, brilliant background, a murky, unevenly realized foreground. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.