I Am an Island by Tamsin Calidas

From Goodreads

When Tamsin Calidas first arrives on a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides, it feels like coming home. Disenchanted by London, she and her husband left the city and high-flying careers to move the 500 miles north, despite having absolutely no experience of crofting, or of island life. It was idyllic, for a while. But as the months wear on, the children she'd longed for fail to materialise, and her marriage breaks down, Tamsin finds herself in ever-increasing isolation.

Injured, ill, without money or friend she is pared right back, stripped to becoming simply a raw element of the often harsh landscape. But with that immersion in her surroundings comes the possibility of rebirth and renewal. Tamsin begins the slow journey back from the brink.

Startling, raw and extremely moving, I Am An Island is a story about the incredible ability of the natural world to provide when everything else has fallen away - a stunning book about solitude, friendship, resilience and self-discovery.

My thoughts

I am not sure how I came across this one, whether I just spotted it when looking for a book or had come across it online when someone had read it.

This was an interesting read about Tamsin and how she coped moving to a Scottish island. It wasn't an initial easy choice that she and her husband made, but it's one that she is rather glad that she made in the end.  Sadly her marriage didn't survive, but it's a decision that sees her isolated and alone.  Tamsin finds that in some ways this is the making of her as she begins to turn her life around and make something of herself as a single person, not relying on others as she may have done in the past.

If you ever come across it, why not give it a go for yourself and find out what she had to go through as she began to learn how to be alone on an island.