Malachy Tallack was unhappy when his mother moved the family from England to the Shetland Islands, as far north as you can go in Britain. He was nine years old, his parents had recently separated, and he says, "It took a long time to feel like home".
But the remote, wind-whipped islands became so much a part of him that after his university studies in mainland Scotland he returned for 10 years, three of them on the most isolated, Fair Isle, known for its bird life and patterned sweaters. He worked as a reporter and magazine editor, on roads, in a school, on ferries, and keeping sheep. Musical, as many Shetlanders are, he plays guitar, sings and writes songs.
By the time he came to write books, Tallack's imagination was shaped by his environment.
"There seems to be a particular kind of island mentality," he says in a Shetland-tinged lilting accent. "From outside people often see islanders as insular. Shetlanders are community-minded and inward-looking in some ways but people also travel a lot and are outward-looking.
"I've always been interested in other islands. There's a knowability to islands; they're defined spaces and there's a sense you can know them in ways you can't with other places. You can walk around the edges of Fair Isle in a day."
In an effort to understand the place he came from, Tallack set out on a journey around the 60th parallel of latitude that took him through Scandinavia, St Petersburg, Alaska, Quebec and unpopulated, frozen places. As British writer Will Self wrote in a review of the resulting travel memoir, published in 2015, "Tallack gropes towards comprehending his own homing instinct".
As Tallack explains on the phone from Glasgow, where he has lived for three years: "60 Degrees North began as a standard travel book, but it became clear there was a more personal aspect. I wanted to know how people connect to places and what makes a place home. I wrote about my own history and how I came to connect with Shetland."
Tallack realised all the places he'd visited were linked by having the same length of day and the same quality of light. Most were fairly remote and the residents were challenged by the environment.
"Shetland was climatically the mildest," he says with a laugh. (I laugh too; I've been there in June when the temperature didn't rise above 10 degrees.)
"Places that challenge people are where people have the strongest connection, they're more aware of their place," he says. "In the modern world we hardly need to think about where we live because we eat the same food, and go to the same shops."
While working on 60 Degrees North, Tallack began to think more about islands. He wrote a chapter on Thule and Frisland, two islands that lay on the 60th parallel but only in legend. At the same time he read news stories about Sandy Island, which had long been on maps near New Caledonia, but was now found to be non-existent – and probably an error.
This led him to pull out the chapter and develop it into his new book, The Un-Discovered Islands, about "an archipelago of myths and mysteries, phantoms and fakes". Tallack did all the research for this one in libraries and online, finding old sailors' journals and other "incredible material".
Asked for his favourite island, Tallack nominates Javasu. In 1817 a woman in a turban wandered into an English village near Bristol speaking an unrecognisable language. Eventually two men claimed they understood her and had learnt she was Caraboo, a kidnapped princess from the East Indies island of Javasu.
But, as Tallack says, "she was from Devon". Mary Willcocks was deported to the US, even though she was mentally disturbed and it was the men who had created the hoax to ingratiate themselves in a society obsessed with the exotic Orient.
Tallack has never been to a tropical island, but his catalogue (beautifully illustrated by Katie Scott) includes many in the Pacific and the Torres Strait, places that had little sea traffic and so remained on maps for a long time. Preferring cool climates, he hopes to visit Kangaroo Island off South Australia during his coming trip to Australia.
With his head full of amazing fantasies, it is no wonder that Tallack has come full circle and is working on a novel set in contemporary Shetland, his island home.
Malachy Tallack will appear at Perth Writers' Festival (February 23-26), Adelaide Writers' Week (March 4-9) and Berkelouw Mona Vale, Sydney (March 2).
The Un-Discovered Islands
Malachy Tallack
Polygon (NewSouth), $34.99
