The malevolent Tam Casey, who personifies the darker side of glic, “is as soapy as a peeled parsnip”. Through Nuala’s eyes, the tailor himself is “slight, with skinny legs and a high hairline, and heavylidded eyes and a nose like a peregrine”. McGill has a wonderful capacity for original character description that harks to the era. She is suspicious of everyone except her brother, and orders Nuala about like a skivvy as she installs herself in the kitchen “shooting dulse into the grate, the red juice running down the sheugh of her chin”. Spinster Ginny, “sharp as a blade of arrow grass”, takes glic to a new level. It is a glic move that ultimately backfires when the tailor’s older sister Ginny becomes part of the package. Realising that she needs security, Nuala accepts an offer of marriage from the island’s ageing tailor. Given the gift of healing from her grandfather, Nuala has an innate sense of the land and the power of nature that helps her earn a crust but is barely enough to sustain her. The taller you get, the more bent and frail they become, like there’s only so much space or straightness to go around.” Left on the island to look after her grandparents, Nuala has wisdom beyond her years: “It’s an odd bittersweet thing to grow up with old people.

The protagonist Nuala Byrne’s family emigrated to Newfoundland when she was a child. Keeping your wits about you, knowing the landscape and the devious ways of fellow islanders are vital to survival, especially for women. The inhabitants of Rathlin island off the Antrim coast in the late 19th century are a glic bunch. It's a word that seems particularly pertinent to the people of old Ireland who had to battle poverty, famine and foreign rule to stay alive. Sly, cunning, shrewd, clever – these adjectives come close but are not pinpoint. The characters of Bernie McGill's accomplished new novel The Watch House are glic, that old Irish word that belies exact translation.

The butterfly cabinet by bernie mcgill