Crossing the Sound by Peter Irvine review: 'what goes up must come down'

Peter Irvine’s debut novel tells a story of naked ambition set in the heady days of music industry hype and spend, writes Fiona Shepherd

Write what you know, they say. It’s safe advice for a debut novelist and Peter Irvine has run with it. Crossing the Sound opens with a rejuvenating getaway to Raasay in 1988.

The idea for this novel first came to Irvine on a trip to the same island in the same year and has been percolating ever since. In the meantime, Irvine has been a bit busy with running Edinburgh’s Hogmanay celebrations among other large scale shindigs, as well as writing and editing 14 editions of insider travel guide Scotland the Best. When he describes the intoxicating effects of climbing Raasay’s distinctive Dùn Caan you sense the first-hand frisson.

His protagonist, one hopes, is a more arms-length creation. Thom Lloyd is a Saatchi man in all but name, born in Scotland but raised in London’s advertising and marketing culture. When he lands randomly on Raasay, he’s looking for a new buzz. Within 24 hours, the key relationships which inform the novel are forged when he encounters teenage guitar prodigy Eliot and is seduced by painter Rhona. Later, the nature of their relationship is dropped like a squandered bombshell and lurks around like an increasingly weird secret.

The slow, atmospheric pace of this opening evaporates the moment Eliot, with Thom installed as his manager, leaves in search of musical opportunities. The novel is a different world when it’s off the island, one which appears outwardly glamorous, but follows a more conventional overnight sensation narrative – recording a demo, forming the band, choosing the name, teasing the industry, creating some hype, world at their feet in months.

This was an era when the music industry still had money to waste and the route to success was guarded by London-based gatekeepers, but the ambitious Eliot knows what he wants (artistic control, an audience) and what he doesn’t (fame, literal recognition). A plan, as cynical as it is starry-eyed, is contrived to create an enigmatic masked outfit who delegate Thom as the public face of the group.

Irvine drops in contemporary names, locations and events, some more seamlessly than others, as the band charm NYC, escape to Ibiza and brace for impact. Inevitably, what goes up must come down. The unravelling is swift but detailed, unexpected yet bathetic. Once again, Irvine sticks to what he knows, setting the denouement in Glasgow’s beloved Barrowland ballroom, the venue he helped to revive in the early 80s, as the city opens its year as European City of Culture, an event he organized.

This version of events is messy in all sorts of ways and it’s a relief to end back where the story began, across the Sound, away from the madness and with enough distance to reflect on how you build hype and then construct a legacy.

​Crossing the Sound by Peter Irvine, Luath Press, £10.99

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