Not only is Cry Uncle the first of Russel D. McLean’s novels I have read, it is also the first crime fiction I’ve read set in Dundee. Having previously turned away crime plots set locally, thinking that familiarity would somehow dampen the thrill associated with the genre, McLean surprises with his new novel, dragging me Read More
Reading a new book by an author whose work you have never encountered before is, in many ways, like meeting someone for the first time. We can certainly think of an author’s work as an extension of themselves where their thoughts, ideas, values and points of view are displayed. Just like many things in life, Read More
When Tim Clarkson writes of the Cumbrian people, he refers neither to the natives of Cumberland, nor modern Cumbria, but to the “North Britons” of the former kingdom of Strathclyde. From Govan, its cultural and political centre, the Cumbrian realm extended southward beyond the Solway Firth, leaving indelible marks that remain today. Clarkson’s latest offering, Read More
Boogeyman Dawn is hard reading; hard in the tradition of Alice Munro, of some of Toni Morrison, of what is often politely called “unflinching social realism”: about racism, sexual abuse, poverty, identity struggle. Raina Leon’s collection is about people whom poetry, more than prose, often disregards; it is concerned with suffering, which often also sits uncomfortably Read More
Outside Verdun is Fiona Rintoul’s translation of the German war classic Erziehung vor Verdun. It narrates the story of Private Bertin, a Jewish soldier who, following an act of compassion towards a French war prisoner, is ostracised by his anti-Semite superiors. As a consequence, he is buffeted between various danger zones on the western front, Read More
The mainstreaming of Out There, an anthology of prose and poetry by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender writers from Scotland, is a sign of the times, receiving, as it did, a contribution from the Royal Society of Edinburgh. There’s a stellar cast of writers, including Ali Smith, Jackie Kay, Val McDermid, Louise Welsh, Jo Clifford, Read More
Kirsty Gunn’s latest collection of short stories, Infidelities, is a beautiful, subtle work, invested in exploring different forms of narrative and working them to form a tapestry of all the ways humans can stray from one another: physically, mentally, literally, and even in their inability to recall events in the same way. “Memorial” explores the Read More
Football is always said to be “the beautiful game” or a “religious cult” and now there is a book that wants to prove both of those statements correct. David Peace’s previous works tend to focus on the darker side of the north of England, masculinity and the neoliberal individualism that was seen in the 1980s; Read More
Water is the element in Jenny Lewis’s latest collection, Taking Mesopotamia. From the locus of Mesopotamia (meaning the land “between two rivers”), the poems encompass the waters of childbirth (“Mine”), the flooded irrigation ditches in Iraq (“April 1916”), the grey rain of the Rhondda (“Blaenclydach”) and the flood myths of Gilgamesh and Noah. The opening Read More
Touching, funny, pensive, self-aware, honest. Michel Faber’s discussion of his latest novel, The Book of Strange New Things was all of these. Following the story of Peter Leigh, a Christian missionary who leaves his loving wife Beatrice behind spread his faith to the alien world of Oasis, Faber’s novel is a fabulous study of love, Read More