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
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
My Italian Bulldozer is billed as a modern Commedia dell’arte and as such includes all of the expected players: The lovers, La Signora (the scheming female figure), Pierrot (the sad clown), Il Dottore (the mad professor), and the commoners. Main character Paul is a successful food and wine author who is struggling with the break-up 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