The Letters of Ivor Punch

Author/Guide: Colin MacIntyre

Why a Booktrail?

1990s: 2000s: All islands have their secrets. This one has more than most.

ISBN: 978-0297609254
Genre: Fiction

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What you need to know before your trail

Alexander is a boy whose origins are clouded by mystery. His grandfather one day rows out in to the Atlantic never to return and it’s thought that he was trying to reach The Looming, a rock of local myth. But Alexander is really troubled about it and what happened to his mother.

Alexander is not the only person on the island trying to find answers. The island holds on to many of its secrets such as why mysterious words appear on the cliff by the bay. And why a man called Ivor Punch could hold the key to it all.

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Travel Guide

This is the first novel by Colin Macintyre, the Hebridean singer songwriter and although a fictional history of a Scottish island family, its a story about an aged islander and former police sergeant who writes a series of letters to the US president about his life, the state of the world, anything really.

These stories, letters,showcase the unnamed and fictional island but we’ve based the booktrail on Mull as well, this is the island Colin knows so well. It’s an island populated by both real and fictional characters. Isabella Bird a 19th century explorer makes an appearance. The islanders of course are fictional but are largely based on the people Colin grew up with and the use of vernacular and the feeling of shared wisdom the stories create the feeling that this is a stream of wisdom you’re listening to.

Meeting the Punch family through the generations reveals the secrets of the island, the family tree, the landscape as a characters as well as a setting and the changes the island has seen from the traditional crofting to the tide of young islanders moving away for work. This is a community in transit – and those clifftops have seen it all.