“Quit fucking black cops or get booted from the Communist Party.” The opening line of Jonathan Lethem’s ninth novel delivers a stark warning of the somewhat indelicate prose that lies ahead. Dissident Gardens is a modern American epic that follows the people involved in the alternative political movements of the last century, from Communist cells Read More
“Help this story live. We kindly ask that you keep the ending a secret. We wouldn’t want to spoil the ending for other theatregoers and we wish to preserve the ongoing mystery of this iconic murder mystery masterpiece!” So says the programme for Dundee Rep’s masterful performance of Agatha Christie’s classic murder mystery And Then Read More
Positively narcissistic, Xavier Dolan’s newest film is a stylish and suspenseful tale of homoeroticism in rural Canada. It focuses on the eponymous Tom (Dolan himself) and his psychological journey as he becomes trapped in a sadomasochistic relationship with Quebec farmer Francis (Pierre-Yves Cardinal). Tom journeys to the farm for the funeral of his boyfriend Guillaume, Read More
A.L Kennedy has a well-deserved reputation as one of the best writers working in Britain today. In her latest collection, All the Rage, Kennedy turns her gaze toward the wretched aspects of love: the fault-lines where the erotic becomes violent, where love degrades into betrayal, and where the edges of language rise up, rendering her Read More
Thomas A. Clark has published his second collection of poems with Carcanet Press entitled Yellow and Blue (2014). Like his other volumes this book works within the minimalist tradition he has developed in relation to the Pittenweem Gallery that he now runs with Laurie Clark in the East Neuk of Fife. These short poems of Read More
All the Beggars Riding, the third novel by Lucy Caldwell, demonstrates an impressive command of complex emotional narratives and a playfulness with the technicalities of truth and story-telling. Its predominant theme is that of families and their destructive secrets which echo down generations. It also asks if and how we might break free from the Read More
(France 2014) 21-27 March, DCA Jalil Lespert’s Yves Saint Laurent is one of two 2014 biopics about the famous fashion designer who was born in 1936 and died in 2008. Pierre Niney, as Yves, delivers a performance which movingly captures the shy, mischievous insouciance of the Algerian-born gay artiste whose rise from Christian Dior’s assistant Read More
One of the more tiresome habits shared in recent years by publishers and reviewers alike has been the hailing of almost any new arrival in the thriller genre as “the new John le Carré”. Even ignoring the question of whether le Carré can really adequately be described merely as a thriller writer, the epithet is Read More
The three book-length poem sequences in A Drinan Trilogy were originally published under the pseudonym “Adam Drinan” in the 1940s and 50s by modernist poet Joseph Macleod (1903-1984). This is a timely re-publication, as two of the pieces concern the very topical issues of Scottish cultural, national and constitutional identity. Macleod was a BBC newsreader Read More
Paul Genega’s fifth full-length poetry collection explores the ways in which the tangible, external world influences our experiences of life and the formation of our identities. All I Can Recall addresses its theme through an array of diverse topics – from vast, global events like the Great Depression to the deeply personal impact of our Read More