Small Expectations by Donald S. Murray, a Lewis man now living in Shetland, goes well beyond the wry claim of the title. From the author of the intensely evoked and researched The Guga Hunters (Birlinn, 2008), focusing on a small group of Western Islanders who hunted gannets, expectations are great, and are not disappointed.

This new collection of explorations of the inner and outward Hebridean is a three-course meal for the mind, weaving stories and poetry with a shimmering sensitivity. From his deep island roots, Murray has travelled far to come full circle to this book. It’s a hymn of love and longing; of belonging and exile, and a wry, perceptive conjuring up of the individual exploring himself and straining against a particular, imposed identity.

The book is beautifully produced, with striking cover artwork by Doug Robertson. It’s sensitively thought out, reading seamlessly from cover to cover, or as a ‘dipping in’ book. The mix of story and poetry is organic and satisfying – it shows off the full breadth of Murray’s talents, and the depth and musicality of his voice.

Murray has a sharp eye for character and tells it as it is: the places people have in their community, the restrictions and liberations that brings about; the peculiarities, small-mindedness and generosity of the islanders. He focuses on the imaginative life, bound to the islands and his native Gaelic – ‘the ghost inside my throat’, and the fear of losing them, while the lust for travel, adventure and education pulls him ever away, glimpsing ‘the clink of far-off worlds’.

There are lovely poignant stories, exposing how communities interact and how people can be forced out of their usual roles. In Valentine’s Day in the Hebrides, life is turned upside down by the arrival of a Valentine card on the door mat of every John MacLeod on the island (sent by a lost love who cannot remember her John’s address). Consternation ensues, with everyone looking at themselves, and each other, in a wary new light, and the unexpected result of encouraging a particularly bashful John MacLeod to finally declare himself to the woman he has long admired.

Throughout, the central questions are prominent. What gives a sense of belonging? When do you no longer belong? How can you escape from your roots? How can you pay homage to your cross-hatched love of a place and its landscape and traditions that shaped you? The questions are posed and explored, although it is clear there are no answers, or a varying multitude of them.

Clear influences are the surprising combination of Dickens, Iain Crichton Smith and Clash lead singer Joe Strummer, whose roots were in Lewis. ‘Should I stay or should I go now?’ from the Clash song, sums up the restless impetus of the book, and the capturing of those moments when your childhood home is sometimes a prison, or a lost home from which you realise you have escaped more thoroughly than you ever meant to. There’s great deal of haunting, wry sadness and wisdom in the book.

‘If things got worse, he could always live

on sea-pink, heather, the sprawl and tuck of fish

hooked upon the foreshore, all that was in the gift

of the old world that he’d squandered and let slip.’

Small Expectations will be launched unusually in a simultaneous, virtual experience across the whole UHI campus, from Shetland to the Western Isles, including Orkney College, on Friday 26 February. The book is available from bookshops or directly from Two Ravens (www.tworavenspress.com), price £9.99.