The Testament of Gideon Mack

Starting off the third year in a row with a book that will undoubtedly be in my top five, if not my book of the year. This is the story of when Gideon Mack cheated death and met the Devil, and it ticked all my boxes:

found text - check!
unreliable narrator - check!
the uncanny - check!
footnotes - check!
set in a wee village in Scotland - check!
folklore and local customs - check!
standing stones - check!
religion vs the de'il - check!
ambiguous ending - check!
cantankerous but soft hearted auld wummin character I'm probably going to grow into - check!

James Robertson is an incredible storyteller, and I can't wait to read more of his work.

Liked this a lot, I'm almost surprised how much. It's the (fictional) memoir of a (fictional) Presbyterian minister who claims to have fallen down a chasm in Scotland down to a river, and to have been rescued by the Devil himself. That's the book jacket pitch, and of course it's the main event, but I was a bit surprised at what a small portion of the book it is. Well-drawn characters and of course the question asked by Mack's fictional contemporaries is the question posed to the reader: Is Mack mad, lying, or somehow telling the truth?

Quite readable and oddly compelling.