Coming a little later than halfway through Spark’s career, Territorial Rights is a romp. Set in Venice, the novel pulls together and twists half a dozen contrivances, and comes out with an almighty tangle. The plot begins with Robert Leaver, an English Art History student arriving in the Italian city, in pursuit of Lina Pancev, Read More
As someone whose only prior dealings with the works of Muriel Spark came from a forced reading of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie many years ago, I was far from sure that I was going to like A Far Cry from Kensington. However, the book came as a pleasant surprise. The story follows the Read More
There is nothing lukewarm about Muriel Spark. In her writing she displays all the extravagance of an eccentric mind. Her eighth novel is set in Jerusalem in 1961, when the Mandelbaum Gate segregated Jerusalem into Jordan and Israel. As Gabriel Josipovici explains in his fine introduction to the 2018 Birlinn edition, this novel is Spark’s Read More
Aberdeen Artists Society (AAS) and Historic Environmental Scotland are hosting an open exhibition at Duff House in Banff. With Aberdeen Art Gallery closed for refurbishment, the AAS has had to look further afield to show their work. Duff House is a prestigious location, home to many significant works of art from the National Galleries of Read More
Do you remember when you were learning to read and it was both difficult and exciting to mouth the next word? Then there’s the thrill of recognition. The simple rhyming title of Vahni Capildeo’s chapbook seas and trees – presented in lowercase sans serif typeface – may take the reader back to those days. One Read More
Sara Hirsch’s debut is a photo album of memories described by a woman not trying to be anyone other than herself. Still Falling is a collection of both rare and everyday encounters which are often shocking, and always personal. The title itself suggests a continuation of mistake making and learning, rather than a Wonder Woman Read More
In a mizzling rain that brings darkness to the red heartstone of the city, I set out to meet David Kinloch to interview him about his Ars Poetica in light of his recent publication In Search of Dustie-Fute, shortlisted only this morning for the Saltire Poetry Prize. We have arranged to meet in “Tinderbox”, Ingram Read More
Imagine the poet as a sandwich-board man, with his daily routine of spreading the word. Dennis O’Driscoll was such a poet – plain-speaking, astute, wary of ornament – his poetry pronounces ‘every day’ on the board at the front, and ‘death’ at the back, as he walks away. Born in Tipperary, on New Year’s Day Read More
The children will play with the Sea they will learn addition from the corpses piled on the sidewalks subtraction from decapitated trees[.] Such wounds, remembered even after the page turns and the book ends up on the shelf, are so common in Khoury-Ghata’s work that they shape their own reality, giving the readers a new Read More
Has David Morley really “cast off the worlds of myth and magical fable” as the back blurb of this collection suggests? His shape-shifting, shift-shaping Romani folk tales are what has made his work so wonderfully distinctive so far. He won the 2015 Ted Hughes Award for The Invisible Gift, his Selected Poems. Is this collection Read More