Three men and nine boys are landed by boat on a remote sea stack on the archipelago of St Kilda to spend a few weeks catching the numerous sea birds who roost there during the summer. The boat does not return. As the days and weeks pass the truth of their abandonment slowly dawns on them. Surely only the end of the world could have causes this. The rest of the people of St Kilda have been taken up to heaven, but the angels don;t know where to find them. Gripped by a terror that's as much spiritual as it is physical, with the cold of winter setting in and their store of birds dwindling, the boys struggle to survive perched together on the sheer rocky cliffs. At first Quillam's stories keep flagging spirits up, but time and hardship and religious fervour slowly erode all sense of hope.

A riveting, harrowing, sometimes funny, always gripping read.