A debut novel which illustrates the tribulations and triumphs of raising an autistic child, Truestory by Catherine Simpson is simultaneously captivating, poignant and vivid. Living on a remote farm, Alice is forced to deal with Sam, her autistic son, Duncan, an emotionally estranged husband whose ventures plunge the family into chaos, and Larry, a travelling Read More
Donna Stonecipher’s Model City is an evocative and thought-provoking collection; despite an at times formulaic structure and expression, each poem feels new and progressive. Over the course of seventy-two separate pieces, the collection answers the simple question: “What was it like?”. In spite of being deliberately ambiguous about what the “it” is (perhaps the experience Read More
Andrew Nicoll is well-known for his novels If You’re Reading This I’m Already Dead and The Good Mayor, the latter of which won the Saltire Prize for the First Book of the Year in 2009. His latest book is a murder mystery titled The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne. The cover, Read More
Do you ever wonder what was it like for a Black person to live under the iron regime of Margaret Thatcher? Well wonder no more. Grab Lemn Sissay’s Rebel Without Applause and submerge yourself in his free verse, which bears witness to the lives of Black people in Manchester. Born and raised in Britain, Sissay Read More
For those, like me, who are unfamiliar with haibun, Colin Will’s The Book of Ways looks initially like dense prose poetry. At the start of the book, however, Will provides an illuminating explanation of the form without prescribing interpretations. The advantages of haibun seem to be its ability to balance conversational, observational and autobiographical prose Read More
It’s not a nice day for a white wedding… Beauty and desire can only take you so far in life, a lesson our main character is forced to learn, yet one which director Paula Oritz’s latest work fails to comprehend. A film of very little merit outside of banal superficiality, The Bride is a long Read More
Using the voyeurism of cinema as a medium for the superficiality of the fashion world, Mads Matthiesen’s latest film The Model stares down the cold and unblinking camera lens at the notoriously harsh industry. Focusing on body image, the film does nothing to glamorise the lifestyles of those working within high fashion, examining the mind-set Read More
Seeing Through the See-Through, by Mat Fleming gives us an intimate look at the usage of scientific imaging technologies and the potential which science has in shaping our cultural identities. Fleming’s works are the result of a nine month residency in the Dundee Imaging Facility within the university’s School of Life Sciences, supported by the Read More
Dark Matter is a poetry collection that may be problematic to get to grips with. This is in part due to the fact that Aase Berg was a member of the Surrealist Group of Stockholm in the 1980s. The problem, however, does not primarily rest with the collection’s surrealist undertones, but with the overall complexity Read More
The seventh poetry collection by poet, artist, curator and vanguardist SJ Fowler, {Enthusiasm} is raw, fast and ferocious in its delivery, taking on subjects such as war, modernity and the environment, mixing these with references to popular culture. Full of energy, sometimes aggressive, Fowler’s collection is aptly titled, as its pieces are thrust at the Read More