She’d been hit, and laid on the verge. Slinging her dead weight round the shoulders for a two mile walk to the cottage that drew stares, her head walloping this and that way, my hands held her paws at peace. Under the hedge all summer she suffered the usual. Her snarl deterred nothing. Beetles decided Read More
Travelling on the train to Glasgow, I dug around in my bag and found my copy of Douglas Lindsay’s The Legend of Barney Thomson. The cover brandishes the phrase “now a major motion picture”, so it must be a good read, right? A brand new book, I timidly opened the rigid cover, careful not to Read More
Killochries has been termed Jim Carruth’s first full collection which is possibly unintentionally misleading. Five chapbooks, an illustrated fable and numerous awards lie between this and his already assured debut Bovine Pastoral. The inside cover’s description of a “verse novella” is considerably more accurate. This is a narrative, yet Killochries is neither quite a single Read More
“A story unfolds. It doesn’t fall into your lap, all sorted. You miss the significant bits, or you might hoard and file details that just don’t seem to matter.” So says the idiosyncratic narrator of Ian Stephen’s wonderful novel, A Book of Death and Fish, and the author certainly follows this non-pattern of writing himself. Read More
IC-98 is an artistic duo comprised of Finnish artists Visa Suonpää and Patrik Söderlund, who have been brought to the DCA through their work Abendland (Hours, Years, Aeons) after representing Finland in the latest Venice Biennale. The work is part of an ongoing documentation of their hometown Turku and its transition through unfolding social and Read More
Having been coaxed into seeing a horror film at a tender age, I’ve never since been able to gain enough distance from the gothic form to relish its thrills dispassionately. That half-glimpsed face in the darkened window or the unfamiliar shadow on the landing still results in one of those sudden irrational lurches of the Read More
German history of the 20th century is an ugly and twisted story to tell . Thomas Harding’s narrative of The House by the Lake takes a personal yet critical approach to this subject. He tells the story of a weekend house at Lake Glienecke, built and once owned by Harding’s Jewish ancestors at the edge of Read More
Already an award-winning writer for her short fiction, Sara Baume’s debut novel is in contention for the 2015 Costa First Novel Award. Spill Simmer Falter Wither is set in a nameless coastal town over the course of a year, the book being split up into four “seasons”: the titular spill, simmer, falter and wither (or Read More
From one son of Dundee to another, Don Paterson, allow me to commend this finely wrought collection – it pulls off something quietly virtuoso that reads keen, true and varied. I sensed something redeeming and intimate about this work, so forgive me if I contrive this review as something like an open letter. This does Read More
At Hawthorn Time is a narrative of belonging and identity, wrapped up in an elegiac homage to the natural world. It is the second novel of Melissa Harrison, a freelance writer and occasional photographer who lives in South London. She won the John Muir Trust’s ‘Wild Writing’ Award in 2010 and was a Writer In Residence at Gladstone’s Library, Hawarden, in January Read More