It’s a challenge for a novelist to engage readers with a novel that takes climate change as its central theme. Even this “non-denier” (climate change sceptic) was initially turned off by the prospect of doomsday polemic. I needn’t have worried. Kingsolver’s eighth novel displays all the subtlety, grace and balance of her previous work, regardless Read More
We wanted more. We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the table, tapped our spoons against our empty bowls; we were hungry. We wanted more volume, more riots. We turned up the knob on the TV until our ears ached with the shouts of angry men. We wanted more music on the radio; Read More
Moving away from the atmospheric and restrained I’m Not Scared (winner of the prestigious Italian Viareggio-Repaci Prize) towards the more humorous Steal You Away, Niccolò Ammaniti continues his foray into the comedic with the often ridiculous Let The Games Begin. Intended as a satiric mirror held up to the excesses and celebrity culture of modern Read More
Lesley McDowell has exceeded all expectations with this sensitive, intelligent and thoroughly researched gothic novel: the story of Mary Shelley’s friend Isabella Baxter Booth and her husband David Booth as they come into contact with various forms of “madness” and the ruthless and ambitious Dr. Alexander Balfour. Although this is an intriguing tale of ghosts Read More
An Orwellian dystopia that is the city of Manchester in 2018 draws readers into a fascinating world created by Matt Hill in his novel The Folded Man. The parallels are easy to draw and features within this world are instantly familiar. Hill creates a world which has been all but destroyed, a world which seems Read More
After spending 6 months researching in Glasgow, Pedro Lenz releases his debut Swiss-German novel Der Goalie bin Ig. What’s special about this book? It is written entirely in the vernacular Swiss-German ‘Mundart’. What’s even more special is that Donal McLaughlin has painstakingly translated the work into a thick, west –Scottish dialect and released the novel Read More
Jane Rodgers, presents to the world her first collection of short stories, Hitting Trees with Sticks. The collection is a wide reaching one, taking us from Manchester to Uganda, and touching upon subjects as diverse as African tribal politics, homosexuality, the true nature of love, and death. Each story presents a snap shot, which though Read More
“Where does it all begin?” asks the opening line to Deirdre Madden’s Time Past, Time Present and it is the same question I ask myself as I sit down to write this review. Given the novel’s high school setting as ‘adolescent’ is the only way to describe the literary execution of this book. It’s difficult Read More
Four New Words For Love tells the story of Gina, a single mother from Glasgow, who during the course of the novel becomes homeless, and of her meeting with Jonathan, a recent widower from London, who invites her to live with him. The narrative focuses on Gina and Jonathan’s lives before their meeting, and the Read More
The tenth novel by Glaswegian crime writer Denise Mina, and the third to involve DS Alex Morrow. Gods and Beasts delivers a tale of moral corruption, murder and complicity which explores the connections between the worlds of politics, the police force and the criminal underworld. This novel is one overtly concerned with the institutional mesh Read More