Down to Earth

On Skye in 1980, a sixteen-year-old Glaswegian climbs a fence, stands under a rainbow, and ends up in front of thirty-five thousand people.Euan Moore has no guitar. He has a left hand that races up an invisible neck and a mouth that makes all the noise, the squeals, the scrapes and the whole downhill-on-a-bike rush of it. He's spent two years on Skye with his great-aunt Effie, who hums but will not sing. His great-grannie Kirsty, who sang whole reels with no instrument at all, is gone.Then the sky comes down in Mrs MacAskill's field, and Euan wakes up in the mud at Donington. The singer has lost his voice, the crowd is restless, and somebody has said the lad from Scotland can "e;do the noise."e;Meanwhile, in the back of an ambulance racing along the road to Portree, a very different kind of song is starting.Funny, tender and wonderfully Scottish, Down to Earth is a short novel about grief, family, and the tune you can't sing until someone sings it with you