The Overstory is about trees. There’s more to it, but trees (‘The most wondrous products of four billion years of life’) are at its core. The novel casts no illusions about its focus or its intent, leading the reader into a sublime wander through forests and parks, building rage at the injustice meted out to Read More
A novel’s first line is crucial. George Orwell’s 1984 (1949) begins, “It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.” Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (1992) begins, “The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of Read More
“I was woken at two a.m. and shackled and counted, Romy Leslie Hall, inmate W314159, and lined up with the others for an all-night ride up the valley.” This is how we first meet our protagonist in Rachel Kushner’s third novel ‒ a 29 year old mother serving two life sentences for murdering her stalker. Immediately, two Read More
‘I think often of all the dead who live in the water.’ Everything Under is a disturbing examination of the way our fears and secrets haunt us. Gretel Whiting recalls her search for her flighty mother, Sarah, and the shadows it unearths. She remembers her childhood on the canals with the woman who abandoned her Read More
In this the second centenary year of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Patrick Sandford’s stage adaptation of Shelley’s novel must have appeared as an ideal tribute. Perhaps that was why Lip Theatre Company, Dundee University’s own student-run drama society, chose it as their first production for the new academic year. In truth, however, director Read More
Ten years ago, a brilliant and shrewd mind emerged out of the social and political schisms of India. As if firing arrows, Aravind Adiga scribed his fictional arriviste hero’s every thought and deed in his 2008 Man Booker Prize-winning debut novel, The White Tiger, with sufficient force and accuracy that its target – India – Read More
The director of The Macbeths, Dominic Hill, is not new to adapting the famous play. Having directed the play in the past, including an operatic version, Hill now turns his attention to one of its central themes, focusing on its most compelling relationship, that between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. The Macbeths is a concentrated dose Read More
Entering the space at GENERATOR to explore Michael Curran’s new exhibition on Muriel Spark, The Public Image (Scottish Lady Tiger), one notices how large the gallery feels, with empty spaces between each exhibit. In fact, the Generator Chairperson and curator of the exhibition, Hari MacMillan, explained that the space had been designed deliberately to echo Read More
Bute Noir is a three-day crime writing festival held in the town of Rothesay on the Isle of Bute, a short ferry from Glasgow. Despite being one of the smaller venues for such a festival, the island can hold its own in the field, with some of the most respected authors of this genre attending Read More
“You’re spot on time. Isn’t that good?” Fiona Kidman is warm and merry, bright as a button. She takes me through her kitchen and into the dining room, stopping to point out the view from her window. “Can you see the lights? That’s the airport above the sea, Wellington.” In Wellington, New Zealand, it’s 9.00 Read More