Glaswegian writer Chris Kohler’s debut novel Phantom Limb has a distinct moral core, but – in spite of its main character being a man of the cloth – don’t expect a sermon from this book. In fact, I fancy that believers and atheists could both find their outlooks reflected in its magical-realist plot-wending and dually developing timelines.

The protagonist, Gillis, was a champion distance runner in his youth, until injury forced him to retire. Though of little faith, he’s fallen into a job as a minister in his close-knit coastal Scottish town, living on church property and taking funerals. One of these brings him back into contact with his ex, Rachel: a kind soul, if limited in patience for Gillis’ increasingly erratic behaviour. The driver of this destructiveness? An ancient, severed hand, found by his house and somehow retaining an ability to draw strange pictures…

Interspersing each chapter of the main story is a shorter one, set in an unspecified pre-printing press era. It concerns a young transient, Jan, who finds himself in possession of a holy book’s remnants and reinvents himself as someone with healing powers – while, in the present day, Gillis attempts to do something similar with his mysterious hand. Ultimately, the link between both these yarns is made flesh, as it were, and Phantom Limb’s most striking grand visions are those of Kohler as a novelist.