The Further North You Go

The Further North You Go is a love story, a surreal, tragi-comic tale of how one drink-sodden, coke-fuelled PR executive finds himself at the heart of a remote island community. It's about wellington boot collectors, large motorcycles, very short vikings, ghostly gas men and religious fish. Rusty oil tankers and the Real Santa Claus.It's about fractured families, betrayal and bad comedians. Most of all, it's about the Shetland Isles.Timmy Farrow is a bad man. A man who abandons everything he cares about, everyone who cares about him. A man who runs away, heading north, always north, until he reaches the most remote part of the UK, Shetland. And there's nowhere else to go.He stays, encountering bizarre crofters with vast numbers of boots, crazed birdwatchers, depressed vikings, peculiar mobile librarians and sinister figures with even more to escape from than he does himself.And all the time, he's thinking about home, and what that might mean.The Further North You Go is a strange, hugely emotional, desperately sad, very funny and ultimately uplifting book about one man's journey to the northernmost part of the British Isles. And how what he found there changed him forever. Especially the sheep. Originally published in 2003, this highly personal novel by broadcaster and journalist Tom Morton provides a unique and sometimes very funny insight into life in the Shetland Islands. It's also very moving and an unusual study of a man on the run.