A vulnerable and bullied boy vanishes from a boarding-school in an austerely beautiful part of the Scottish county of Fife. A young nurse from the American South encounters love - and culture-clash - at the school. Her beau, a teacher and former army officer, is a tense and troubled man. A precocious young aesthete stumbles towards maturity. A lecherous, alcoholic headmaster quotes Shakespeare at inopportune moments. Tragedy? Farce? Both? Offset by praise-poetry to Fife landscape and folk culture, Tom Hubbard's complex, sardonic tale scurries through unexpected corridors and caverns, up and down dubious stairs, its secret architecture reflecting the "Big Hoose" in which much of the action takes place -