I almost didn’t finish Donald and His Seven Cows by Angus Peter Campbell. It’s not badly written. In fact, it reads cleanly and naturally, and the prose has a rhythm that feels authentic. At the same time, at least on the surface, it’s a book about a solitary old farmer on a Scottish island who spends all day taking his cows for walks and listening to the fairies. A good novel opens the door to a brand-new world and invites you in. Initially I didn’t want to go.

In the end, it was the lucid, childlike chatter of the narrator, Donald, that drew me in to a grudging curiosity, followed by real enjoyment. Why was he nattering on about his lead cow, Maisie? What is the significance of plodding around the same mile of pasture every day? To the reader, Donald’s life appears to be one of failure: missed opportunities, lack of ambition, stifled romance, and unutterably boring loneliness. Donald, however, seems to be at peace with the world, contented. He’s an odd one. His neighbors call him a fool and think he may be coming adrift mentally.

Donald spends all day with his cows, leading them on a “round mile” and stopping to graze at twelve marked intervals. There is an allusion to the Stations of the Cross in this. The book is a one-way conversation with the reader as Donald goes around, meditating on his life, his cows, his neighbors, faith, relationships, and the change and loss of community that he has witnessed through his life. Interspersed throughout are a number of folktales related to the landscape. Donald talks to his cows, to folktale characters, and to the people of his past. And they talk back to him. The use of Gaelic words and expressions is charming.

It’s a joy to have all these voices from elsewhere join those of Maisie and the herd and Mac Talla nan Creag and Catrìona as we walk the round mile together. I think of how big a world lots of little things make. Like how I make my porridge every morning from a handful of pinhead oats and milk and watch how it bubbles up and swells to fill the pan and my plate and my belly. One thing becomes another.

The reader is kept in suspense on the subject of Donald’s sanity. Is he imagining his conversations with the landscape, or does he really believe they are happening? But then, how sane is modern life, where many conversations take place online with people one has never met?

At the novel’s end, Donald is compelled to make a decision about what sort of life he wishes to have: the comfort of living in splendor or the real life he has with his cows. There’s even a sweet little love interest.

This is a book about faith, and meaning, and reality. The lines that have stuck with me are these:

I don’t believe in God because I’ve seen miracles or because it comforts me but because he’s as real to me as the wellington boots I stand in. He’s everywhere, from the gurgling sound my tea makes as I pour into my cup first thing every morning to the wild way the wind sweeps against the gable end of the house every night. The miracle is that I can lie down to sleep every night and get up every morning believing it’s worth getting up again. To stir the fire and boil the kettle and feed Wilhelmina and Rover and to greet Maisie and the herd, again and again, for our new day’s adventure.