In her newest collection, Ghost of the Fisher Cat, Afric McGlinchey has taken poetry to another level. Here, her poems are sequenced into a novella-like arrangement, grouped into sections where she has allowed characters and relationships to develop “[…] across a time-space continuum […]”. The poet fits approximately ten poems of great variety into each Read More
A title like Treats suggests a lot. But be warned: the flavour of the short stories in Lara Williams’ debut collection is mostly one of bitterness and regret. These short short stories – 21 of them in a mere 120 pages – give a very bleak impression of modern existence. Written mostly in the final Read More
The year is 2116, and the place is an Independent Scotland. The Battle of the Sexes in which “men killed women killed men, fathers killed mothers killed fathers, daughters killed sons killed daughters …” (you get the idea) is 20 years in the past, superseded by a period of “kissing-and-making-up-and-fucking”. This results in the massive Read More
Theresa Muñoz is well-kent on the Scots literary scene, being published in many fine journals; she writes for both the Scottish Review of Books and the Herald, and her publishing credits reflect a continuing presence in Canada. Close (HappenStance, 2012) introduced her work in pamphlet form; Settle is her first full collection. That title Read More
Ben Smith impresses his readership with colourful poems in his newest collection Sky Burials. His academic specialisation in Environmental Poetry is represented – playfully – throughout this entire collection. With this contradictory title, the poet does not only offer an oxymoron by endowing the sky with an earthly attribute, but also introduces a criticism of Read More
Early in the 1980s, I visited an extraordinary installation in the Centre Georges Pompidou. Viewers wore special slippers to enter a room, a carpet to ceiling, wall to wall kinetic/op art environment which seemingly undulated, changing entirely when studied from different positions. The artist’s use of lenticular printing on folded surfaces, in precise mathematical terms, Read More
Madeleine Thien is not unused to being shortlisted for prizes, or winning them. Her previous work Dogs at the Perimeter was shortlisted for Berlin’s 2014 International Literature Award and won the Frankfurt Book Fair’s 2015 Internationaler Literaturpreis. She, as with the narrator of Do Not Say We Have Nothing Marie Jiang, is the daughter of Read More
Virginia Reeves (Scribner, 2016) hbk. 14.99 A graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Virginia Reeves has produced Work Like Any Other as her debut novel, a remarkable achievement given its impressive authenticity and potency. Apparently, after seven years of life in the wide-openness of the lone-star state, she has Read More
Deborah Levy (Hamish Hamilton, 2016); pbk, £12.99 In an interview given at the time of her previous Man Booker nomination in 2012, Deborah Levy is recorded as saying, “I want to walk my female characters into the centre of my work. They don’t have to be likable but they have to be compelling and complicated.” Well, Read More
Ian McGuire (Scribner, 2016); Hbk, £14.99 Ian McGuire was born near Hull and studied in Manchester and Virginia, USA. The North Water is McGuire’s second novel; his first, Incredible Bodies, follows the career of a University Lecturer. He is currently Co-Director of Manchester University’s Centre for New Writing. It might have been useful for McGuire Read More