London

London is a city that both of the novel’s main characters find themselves at odds with. MacIan is truly an outsider when he comes to London. Not only was he born and spent his entire life in the Scottish countryside, but when he enters the city he finds it to be a very secular place, at odds with his religious upbringing. Despite this, he is more overawed than anything else when he first experiences what the city has to offer. While Turnbull actually lives in London, he finds himself to be more of a mental outsider than a physical one. He is accustomed to the city itself, however the publication that he writes and edits seems to go completely unread by most of the cityfolk. No one really seems interested in what he has to say. The modernity of the city with its secular institutions such as...