The Stornoway Way by Kevin MacNeil

I was in the library recently and this jumped out from the shelves - maybe it was because Kevin is on the list of authors for Wordplay. I remember it being one of a pair of books we read nearly two years ago on the subject of teenage island life. I enjoyed Venus as a Boy, but didn't get time to read The Stornoway Way.
Illuminating and entertaining in equal parts - it's not a book to read stone cold sober. The main thrust was how alcohol greases the wheels of social gatherings, blunts the harshness of humdrum life and lessens the cloying effect of net-twitching in a small community still heavily influenced by the church. Booze starts off as a sticking plaster, then becomes a crutch and finally a lethal injection. There's nothing, literally and metaphorically, at the bottom of a bottle.
It also reminded me of The Testament of Gideon Mack by James Robertson - all three using the ruse that they were written by someone "else" with the author a mere conduit... A good pretense when the subject matter is tricky and/or the locale is small such as the Western Isles or Orkney.