Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni Fagan

This was fairly uncharacteristic second chance sort of a read. I didn’t care for Fagan’s debut, but times change and readers change too and this book turned out to be an absolutely pleasant surprise. Well, as pleasant as reading about people being done in by the worst winter storm in centuries can be.
So global warming. Is. Real. Terrifyingly so as Fagan imagined it. In fact, she’s imagined it a few years ago for the 2020/2021 winter so it’s pretty surreal to be reading it in real (novel) time. This may not be a great winter globally, not by any social, political or economic measures, but at least the weather is reasonable. In the book, it plummets and continues to do so. And the readers get to follow it mostly on a microscale, a caravan park in the remote area of Scotland, surrounded by the seven mountains.
It is a place where Dylan, a tattooed movie loving giant, finds himself, an old caravan being his only inheritance after the death of his beloved mother and grandmother and the demise of the small cinema they operated and lived above. Dylan’s neighbors are a single mom named Constance, locally disreputable for having two boyfriends and an out of wedlock daughter Estella, locally harassed and misunderstood for being trans. Dylan finds himself in love with Constance and charmed by Estella. But is this newfound family in this newfound community enough to sustain a life in the most extreme of circumstances.
And you thought it was alarming when winter was coming…well, now the winter is here. The kind of winter that makes warmth impossible, except for the brief pleasure of sunlight. In fact, according to a local legend, long ago monks came there specifically to store up sunlight within themselves for the winter to come, hence the title. There’s something awesome about that. Actually, my favorite word in English language is apricity, which means the warmth of the sun in the winter. A word so underused it’s literally freaking out the Word program this review is being typed in. There’s such a beauty there, in the word, in the notion and in this novel.
It is such a lovely novel. You wouldn’t think it would be, considering all the heavy themes and the deadly winter and all that, but it really is. It speaks, succinctly and eloquently, on the need for connection, understanding, kindness. It’s about following the beat of one’s own drum, no matter the rhythms it beats and about finding a place to belong. And, of course, about the awesome (as in awe inspiring) power of nature. Or vengeance of nature wronged, maybe.
Narrated mainly by Dylan and Estella, this is a story of outsiders finding their way to live within a world that has literally made living a very dangerous proposition. It’s poignant and elegiac, but somehow not as sad or depressing as you might think. I liked it very much. You have to be in the mood for this sort of thing, it has that quality like certain music, almost dreamy, albeit in a very realistic way. Much like its title, lovely. Recommended.