Bone Deep is a taut, psychological thriller which cleverly threads themes of love, betrayal and revenge through parallel stories. The title, like that of Sandra Ireland’s debut novel, Beneath the Skin, conveys her fascination with the inner world: what compels people to act, and how their actions subsequently affect their psyche. Mac, a retired academic, suffering Read More
To say that Dundee has had a lot going on of late would be a gross understatement. There have been Penguin Parades, new festivals springing up, an influx of performances from the country’s top musical acts and yes, that iconic building by the waterfront. But lodged into the spaces in-between these significant events is ‘The Read More
There are times when life throws us into trying situations that isolate us from the understanding of others. In 2014 Gordon Meade was diagnosed with cancer. In his 9th poetry collection he takes the reader on a full tour of the battlefield – from the diagnosis to the battle itself and finally, its positive verdict. Read More
The story of George Washington Black is told in the first person by Esi Edugyan’s protagonist of the same name in her Man Booker shortlisted novel. Starting as an eleven-year-old field slave in Faith Plantation in Barbados in 1830, the conditions of his slave life in the harsh setting of the sugar plantation is perhaps Read More
In June 2018 I interviewed Philip Lopate, who is probably the most famous living essayist in the world. On camera.* It was something I’d never done before, and to say I was nervous is an understatement. I shook hands with him the day before and heard him deliver his keynote for the ‘Taking ideas for Read More
The Overstory is about trees. There’s more to it, but trees (‘The most wondrous products of four billion years of life’) are at its core. The novel casts no illusions about its focus or its intent, leading the reader into a sublime wander through forests and parks, building rage at the injustice meted out to Read More
“I was woken at two a.m. and shackled and counted, Romy Leslie Hall, inmate W314159, and lined up with the others for an all-night ride up the valley.” This is how we first meet our protagonist in Rachel Kushner’s third novel ‒ a 29 year old mother serving two life sentences for murdering her stalker. Immediately, two Read More
‘I think often of all the dead who live in the water.’ Everything Under is a disturbing examination of the way our fears and secrets haunt us. Gretel Whiting recalls her search for her flighty mother, Sarah, and the shadows it unearths. She remembers her childhood on the canals with the woman who abandoned her Read More
In this the second centenary year of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Patrick Sandford’s stage adaptation of Shelley’s novel must have appeared as an ideal tribute. Perhaps that was why Lip Theatre Company, Dundee University’s own student-run drama society, chose it as their first production for the new academic year. In truth, however, director Read More
The director of The Macbeths, Dominic Hill, is not new to adapting the famous play. Having directed the play in the past, including an operatic version, Hill now turns his attention to one of its central themes, focusing on its most compelling relationship, that between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. The Macbeths is a concentrated dose Read More