The prose throughout To the Highlands is gritty. Witness passages such as: ‘I didn’t sleep that night, because not long after I went to bed … I had to get up and throw up everything I had eaten or drunk over the past week into the shower recess. It stank. I stank.’ Doust addresses issues such as racism and sexism in a manner that is at once subtle and confronting. The characters are expertly sketched, Muir being a case in point. He detests his job and seems ashamed of squandering his private school education. Muir despises white supremacy, but has no issue with sexually objectifying the women around him. He spends much of the novel aching to lose his virginity, and makes frequent reference to his ‘lizard’ (a crude euphemism for penis).

In his puff-piece, Kim Scott writes: ‘Doust works deftly: he disturbs us, then he makes us laugh.’ To the Highlands bears out this observation. The novel may be too unsettling for some readers, but will reward those who stay with the text until the final page.