I must admit I felt a little strange looking in on what looked like an ancient muslin flower which might have fallen from Miss Havisham’s veil…I immediately felt it could be the core of a Rhona book. This is how the author describes how None but the Dead was “born”. Lin Anderson is an exponent Read More
Dirt Road, James Kelman’s latest novel, opens at the outset of a journey; Murdo, a sixteen-year-old accordionist, and his father, Tom, are travelling from Scotland to visit relatives in Alabama. Where one might expect feelings of excitement, the anticipation of an adventure, there is instead a solemn atmosphere. Murdo’s mother has recently passed away from Read More
In Staunin Ma Lane, Holton has selected classical Chinese poems from the 11th century BC to the 14th century AD, some of them well-known to generations of Chinese schoolchildren, for improvisation and translation into Scots, with English “glosses”. Holton states in his useful Afterword: “if you expect to find dictionary definitions of Chinese words in Read More
Deemed by publisher Freight Books as a ‘vital analysis of the state of the nation following the SNP surge at the 2015 general election’, Iain Macwhirter’s Tsunami: Scotland’s Democratic Revolution is a unique insight into the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum and its aftermath. Considering Macwhirter’s first-hand experience in the political arena (his work as a Read More
Dizza Castle is a collection of poems by Iraqi poet Salahi Niazi, selected and edited by his friend David Andrew. This collection introduces Niazi’s work, which is originally written in the poet’s native Arabic to an English-speaking audience. Considered to be one of the pioneers of Modern Iraqi Arabic poetry, Niazi is a hugely prominent Read More
In Brussels in 1511, figures are sculpted from the snow that has fallen for weeks. They include commissions sculpted by artists and the subjects Charon, Pluto and assorted Devils. Winter has brought the beauty recorded in Breughel’s playful paintings to the southern Netherlands. It also destroys. It kills. This dichotomy is central to Peter Davidson’s Read More
(USA, 2016) 14th – 27th October, DCA Tate Taylor’s The Girl on the Train, adapted from Paula Hawkins’ bestselling novel of the same name, recounts the story of alcoholic Rachel (Emily Blunt) who has been left traumatized by her recent divorce and her inability to have a child. Every day she gets on a train. Read More
Lynn Gamwell (Princeton University Press, 2015); hbk, £37.95 Secondary school education seems to continually instil pupils with the concept of the incompatible nature of the discipline of mathematics and the arts. Indeed, such is the acceptance of their opposition that you tend to fall into the category of being good at one and not the Read More
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