Crawford Building, Level 2 18 – 26 May, DJCAD This year, the work of DJCAD’s animation graduates has been spread across two rooms, situated on the second floor of the Crawford Building. In one, the students exhibit their individual work in the form of showreels, portfolios and sketchbooks. The other serves as a small cinema, playing Read More
“I must be hardest person you’ve ever had to track down,” says Dr Femi Folorunso as he leads me to a private booth. “Yes,” I reply, meaning it. A self-described “anti-social” man with work spanning from the Dundee Rep Theatre to Magnetic North in Edinburgh to the Beacon Arts Centre in Greenock, Folorunso is a Read More
Called on its cover ‘a novella in flash’, Bottled Goods follows on from Sophie Van Llewyn’s award-winning flash fiction pieces. This seems a clever move, allowing the author to mix different voices, tenses and forms, never allowing the reader to settle, and mirroring the increasingly jittery and fracturing nature of the life of Alina, the Read More
‘Courage calls to courage everywhere, and its voice cannot be denied.’ Celebrated author Jeanette Winterson takes the first phrase of Millicent Fawcett’s stirring words for the title of her work on the achievements of women since the 19th century. This diminutive book, developed from her 2018 Richard Dimbleby Lectures, appearing flyweight at less than A5 size and only Read More
From Lapland to Dundee (via London and Edinburgh), Hania Allen is well-travelled – in terms of writing at least. Her first novel, The Ice Hotel (2005), takes place in an ice hotel in Swedish Lapland; her subsequent books starring the detective Veronica ‘Von’ Valenti are set in London and Edinburgh and Hania’s current series, featuring Read More
A modern revision of a classic Greek myth is no longer a unique concept. Perhaps this is thanks in part to Madeline Miller’s bestselling debut novel The Song of Achilles, which helped to popularise the idea. Nor is it especially original any more to give maligned women from popular stories ‘the Wicked treatment’, painting them Read More
We step out of Tonic into the stream of pedestrians on Nethergate looking for just the right place to talk. By tacit agreement, we pass up Dundee Contemporary Arts and look in on the Phoenix; but Duncan McLean tows me along. I’m conscious we are drifting too far away from the engagement McLean needs to Read More
Diana Evans’ third novel, Ordinary People, dives deep into the domestic. It revolves around the struggling marital lives of two thirty-something couples living in London with their children. Melissa and Michael were once electric together, full of adventure. Stephanie and Damien were perfect opposites. However, as time passes the couples find themselves ‘living in the Read More
This is the debut novel from Lillian Li, a graduate of the University of Michigan, whose previous work has been published in prestigious titles such as the New York Times and Granta. It is an intergenerational family saga set in a US Chinese restaurant. The restaurant’s speciality is Beijing Duck, the waiters even wearing “duck-patterned Read More
The moors of Northumberland remain wild. Despite the encroachment of pylons and roads, the bogs still hold secrets of the past and dangers in the present. Sarah Moss evokes the stark beauty of the moors in her sixth novel, Ghost Wall. In fewer than 150 pages, she weaves a tale of prejudices, cruelty, rage, mob Read More