"The Stornoway Way" is arguably one of the best examples of recent Anglo-Gaelic literature, and it spoke to me in a way few other books had ever done before the first time I read it. In fact, I liked this book so much that I chose to devote half of my MLitt thesis to this beast. 
In and of itself, the story seems boring - a washed-out drunkard, complaining about his love-life and island existence, but beneath this layer of prose, there's something else, something much more important.
The main character constitutes a broken hybrid whose life story challenges existing ideas of Gaelicness, islands and what it means to be a minority, whilst actively dismantling the majority's ideas of how minorities should behave to retain their asked-for authenticity.
As such, the book is one of the best Scottish books to have ever been written, particularly because it manages to be both intellectual, ironic and extremely gritty, whilst effortlessly rising above the simplistic critique of Scotland, found in e.g. "Trainspotting".
