Just a caveat regarding The Green Isle of the Great Deep.
This book was preceded by the book,
Young Art and Old Hector.
In this earlier book,
Young Art was perhaps eight years old, and his upbringing
was kind of stern, a very poor Scottish family working hard
near the shore and out in the country. He was getting picked on.
Enter the widower, Old Hector, with one maiden daughter living in and worrying after him.
Old Hector seems unflappable and a fount of knowledge.
He calms Young Art down and makes everyday life bearable again.

The Green Isle of the Great Deep turns this all inside out.
In this strange realm, there are people who have died on earth
and are living a sort of ever-after existence.
Although God is not far, He is mostly dreaming His creation, and it takes something rather momentous to wake Him up.
In God's absence, the men in power have become totalitarians,
dedicated to the life of the mind, and utterly heartless.
They oppress the people sorely.

And I find I am haunted, long after reading, by what befalls Old Hector.
Oh, he and Young Art return, all right, to the real world.
But whilst in this other realm,
they are at the mercy of conditions there.
Young Art goes quite wild, and in doing so, he saves himself mostly;
there are citizens who treasure him and guard him covertly.
But Old Hector, giving himself up to the authorities,
is interrogated, and broken! Little is left to the imagination.

We are given to understand that what befalls Old Hector
is not to single the old man out,
it is what every Green Isle citizen is threatened with.
It is when Old Hector surprises everyone, under interrogation,
by demanding to see God, that everything turns around.

The totalitarians are all too human, and as much as they abuse their powers,
they know that if God wakes up, it is all over for them ...

and, in time, Old Hector has his audience with God Himself,
who startles Old Hector by speaking Scottish Gaelic
like the elders of Old Hector's youth.

Not light airy-fairy stuff, this ...
of course, I will read it again.
After I recover.