Good luck with Moonwise, David E – it's a vast hag-tangle of language, but anyone with a love of George Mackay Brown, Ted Hughes, Bob and Carole Pegg and Lal Waterson will feel at home in it.

Here's a postscript. The year after PB's death I was at Whitby Festival (the year they did The Transports as a memorial), and sitting on the final day in a cafe nattering with Kate. A woman at the next table leaned across and asked me about a story I'd told at a Storytelling open session earlier in the week. We fell to talking and after a minute or two I found myself compelled to ask her the question: "Are you Greer Gilman by any chance?" And indeed she was.

This is not nearly as weird as it sounds. PB had described her to me the previous year, having met her on a couple of occasions, and told me that she was a regular attender of Whitby Fest, despite being based in Massachussets. When I told her how, for me, her novel was intimately woven in with Peter's demise, she was visibly moved. We met several times afterwards, at Whitby and the old National Festival. Suibhne's link will give you a pretty good idea of her writing style, and cast of mind. A very remarkable woman.