Nick Laird (Faber & Faber, 2015); pbk £10.99 Laird and I share the hometown of Cookstown, Co. Tyrone, right in the heart of Mid-Ulster. A busy market-town, it was relatively quiet during the Troubles, in comparison at least with the hotspots of Belfast and Derry/Londonderry. But it was not untouched. This common experience of growing Read More
This is an edited transcript and interview, recorded in May 2016 at the University of Dundee for DURA. The interview can be viewed by clicking on the image above. Beth McDonough: Good afternoon Brian Johnstone… it’s a pleasure to have you here. If I were to go through your CV, I think we would take Read More
Tickets for Dundee had been collected from passengers on the train before crossing the bridge. A photograph shows the tickets [of] some who lost their lives that night. The Library of Nineteenth-Century Photography The Last Train from St Fort They have the stubs, some fifty-six Read More
Wyl Menmuir (Salt, 2016); pbk. £8.99 “Who was Perran?” This is the question that Timothy, the main character in Wyl Menmuir’s debut novel, The Many, continues to ask, and it’s a question we find ourselves asking too, especially towards the tragic conclusion. A definitive answer is never forthcoming however, and this is partly why The Read More
Myra Connell (Nine Arches Press, 2015); pbk, £9.99 Myra Connell has previously released two poetry pamphlets: A Still Dark Kind of Work (2008) and From the Boat (2010). Last year, House, her first full collection emerged. People often view a house as protection from the outside world; its sense of safety may also extend, in Read More
Em Strang (Shearsman Books, 2016); pbk: £8.99 Em Strang distrusts labels. For her “Eco-poetry” carries connotations of Green activism, yet she accepts her work is “ecological”. Undoubtedly a feminist, she won’t have her work so named. Equally, she is certain that she is not a nature poet, and though her work has roots in mythology Read More
J.M. Coetzee (Harville Secker, 2016); hbk, £17.99 Coetzee is canonical, curricular – you are unlikely to reach the end of an English degree without having read his Booker and Nobel prize winning novel Disgrace. Coetzee’s mature novels are dazzling, harrowing and beautifully written, in taut, elegant prose that never turns away from the sorrowful, traumatic Read More
Paul Beatty (Oneworld, 2016); pbk, £12.99 Paul Beatty’s latest work, Man-Booker Prize 2016 shortlister, The Sellout, is a novel about town planning. Not, perhaps, the stuff of what the New York Times has called “the most badass” American novel in years but, as Beatty’s vivid depictions of L.A. and Washington show, appearances can be deceiving. Read More
Claire McLaughlin (Survivor’s Press, 2014); pbk, £10 In this her first collection, Claire McLaughlin penetrates the “misty blankness” of vision emerging into the vivid, sensory realm of memory. Blinded by a degenerative retina disease, her poems demonstrate the importance of memory when living without vision. McLaughlin’s account is so intense in its imagery, so arousing Read More
A.L. Kennedy (Jonathan Cape, 2016); hbk. £17.99 Dundee-born A.L. Kennedy needs no introduction, being extensively published in fiction, no slouch in non-fiction, and a respected commentator in various media. She sidelines as an acerbic stand-up comedian; all these abilities and honed forms of observation feed Serious Sweet. At the time of reviewing, this book has Read More