Song To The Moon Also Out Now
Added at 14:08 on 27 May 2025
Song To The Moon is set in the town of Haapsalu, Estonia – where the Arlington Revenant concludes – and there the similarity ends. I was digging around for how to describe this one, and took a look at a short Japanese novel about nothing much I’d read that I thought had a similar style, and there was a review that stated the novel was “enchanting, moving and funny in equal measure.” And I thought, yep, that’s about the size of it. I’ll use that.
Ballad in Blue and Alice On The Shore would be the closest comparisons in my back catalogue, though it's lighter in tone than either of those.
I’m not sure about the situation now, but when we were living in Estonia – ten years ago – there were two Burns suppers in the land. There was one on a Friday night in Tallinn. This was quite formal. There’d be a charity auction, and a raffle, and a something else, as well as the usual Burns speeches and whatever, and there’d be dancing, and the men would all be sitting around in their kilts in that gallus, look at us ruling the world way, that men get at formal events, and I went once and hated every minute of it.
Then the following day, the small town of Haapsalu on the west coast would host a Burns supper, and the whole thing was much more relaxed. None of the extra formal crap, a lovely atmosphere, and as a bonus, most of the speeches would be in Estonian, so I couldn’t understand a word of them, reducing cringe factor to zero.
A piper and a ceilidh band would come over from Scotland and play both events. On the Saturday afternoon in Haapsalu there’d be a curling competition on the frozen lake on the edge of town, the sea would be frozen, snow all around, and the whole damn thing was pretty perfect. We went three years in a row, and in the middle year there was a visiting choir of students from the University of St Andrews, and it snowed a bucketload, and way back then I was moved to write a short movie script around the event.
That movie never got made. Never even entered development hell. I showed it to an Estonian film producer, who literally never spoke to me again, and I showed it to my agent, who said she wouldn’t be able to sell it. And that was that.
I thought, ever since, that it would make a nice little novel, but I wasn’t sure of the narrative voice. And then, as I was writing the Haapsalu scenes of the Arlington Revenant, I hit upon an idea. Song To The Moon would be narrated by the 800-year-old ghost that haunts the Haapsalu castle walls. Thereafter, narrative voice found, storyline and dialogue already written, the novel wrote itself.
The movie script was titled A Winter Night, but then I used that, and the Burns supper, for the tenth Hutton novel, so I had to find something else. Song To The Moon is Dvořák rather than Burns, but I like the title, and I think it weaves nicely into the narrative.
Here's the blurb. Clink of the image to share in the magic.
A short novel about life, love and cultural embrace.
Late January in the small town of Haapsalu, western Estonia. Snow is falling, the sea is frozen, and the townsfolk are preparing to welcome the Scots to celebrate that year’s Burns supper. There’s a visiting choir of students, the ceilidh band and the piper are in town, love is in the air, and all is set cold and fair for a night of music, food, dancing and romance.
Narrated by an eight-hundred-year-old ghost, Song To The Moon is enchanting, moving and funny in equal measure.
"Lindsay has a real ear for dialogue, and a highly visual imagination." Sunday Mirror