Reviews
This thoughtful novel hopscotches through the life of its late heroine, Margaret, a working-class Aberdonian whose posthumous thoughts roam freely over seven decades after she dies of cancer in 2014… A life-crammed mosaic, filled with pain and sadness as well as tenderness and beauty
Daily Mail
Inviting the reader on a rollicking, spellbinding journey as Margaret Bryce visits her past from the vantage point of the afterlife, A Country of Eternal Light is a fiercely original exploration of the way a person's life is constructed
Waterstones Says
A fearlessly ambitious and profoundly moving exploration of 'complicated grief', it is deftly delivered with an honesty, humour and compassion that make it wholly accessible and relatable. An uncanny and evocative original fiction with a stunning twist'
Sunday Post
a beautifully poignant record of a life that brought great sorrow but, nonetheless, was one well lived
Herald
Dalgarno's novel illuminates experiences of loss with humour and tenderness
The Bookseller
Inventive, playful, poignant and deeply moving
Sainsbury's Magazine
‘A Country of Eternal Light is one of those novels that probes very directly at the meaning of life, memory, and the power of grief.’
Damian Barr
Immediately went back and reread it with new knowledge. My god, this is outstanding. Beautiful and humble and totally suffused by the very ordinary joy of loving.'
Kirstin Innes
Mesmerising, stimulating, and life affirming: Dalgarno delivers something immensely original and astute, without sparing entertainment. Following a deceased woman’s journey through lives lived and, along the way, discovering a question to be answered: 'What’s our purpose?
Angie Tsimaras, Judge for The Readings New Australian Fiction Prize
One of the most interesting and inventive novels of the year in terms of style and content
Scots Whay Hae!
About the Book
Margaret Bryce has been having a hard time since dying in 2014.
In a place beyond, we join Margaret as she revisits her life, from her Aberdeen prefab childhood to the birth of her twin girls, through Thatcher’s Britain, the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster, Australia’s Black Summer bushfires, the death of Princess Diana and the COVID pandemic. But something isn’t quite right. Margaret is trying to remember, but also fighting to forget.
A Country of Eternal Light will take you on a journey like no other. It is an utterly original, bitingly funny and poignant novel about life, death, what we choose to remember - and what we’d do anything to forget.
A Waterstones Scottish Book of the Month
Shortlisted for the Readings New Australian Fiction Prize
Shortlisted for the Age Fiction Book of the Year
The Author
Paul Dalgarno
Paul Dalgarno was a Senior Writer and Features Editor at The Herald newspaper group before moving to Australia, where he was Deputy Editor of The Conversation. He is currently Managing Editor of ScreenHub and has written for The Guardian, Archer, ArtsHub, and Australian Book Review. He has worked as an editor in the education, private, not-for-profit and government sectors.
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