“[Claudette] doesn’t see a room, an alcove, a piece of flooring: she sees a work in progress, just waiting to be embarked upon.” This Must Be The Place. If there is one thing Maggie O’Farrell’s loyal readers expect, it’s a good disappearance. In this respect, her Costa short-listed This Must Be The Place follows in Read More
Strathearn Snow Perthshire spirals down, curls inside this bleach bowl. On that flat strath floor, Earn’s eel sparkles black. Cottages shoal to Dunning as single ones are lost. Some fin up Ruthven’s elver burn. Hunch birds of prey wire up, never where they seem. © Beth McDonough Ed: “Strathearn Snow” first appeared in Raum 1(3), Read More
The country that separates fathers and sons has disorientated many travellers. It is very easy to get lost there. […] And the fathers must have known, having once themselves been sons, that the ghostly presence of their land will remain […] Hisham Matar’s debut In the Country of Men, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize (2006) and more; his second, Anatomy of a Disappearance (2011), showed his was Read More
Sylvia Patterson’s I’m Not with the Band describes a three-decade long love affair with music. The esteemed journalist’s turbulent life is set against the highs and eventual lows of pop music and the media business she worked in. Her writing, like her first job in music journalism, magazine Smash Hits, mixes silly anecdotes (the favoured Read More
Any number of books and histories have been written about Queen Elizabeth and her reign. Several well-received films about her which have also explored aspects of her reign. So you might be forgiven in thinking John Guy is re-covering a well-researched topic. He explains what sets Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years apart when he declares, “I Read More
Kate Tempest’s latest publication, Let Them Eat Chaos, comprises of a single long-poem which winds its way through seven individuals’ lives, each at 4:18am in London. On the title page there is a short and simple disclaimer: “This poem was written to be read aloud”. As a reader, you may have a nagging feeling that Read More
The audience at The Rep looked to be squirming as tens of children jumped, wiggled and waved, and agitated in their seats. Each one of them sits by a parent in a Santa hat, a caregiver with a face painted to look like an elf, or a grandparent with tinsel around their necks that leave Read More
Alan McKirdy’s first claim in Set in Stone is: “I am a geologist by accident rather than by design!” A happy accident, as it turns out, as McKirdy’s enthusiasm shines through in his book. Set in Stone is an attractive study of Scotland’s geology for several reasons. The most obvious of these reasons is the Read More
Jacqueline Saphra’s If I Lay on my Back I Saw Nothing but Naked Women is a collection of eighteen entertaining prose poems that weave together several stories recounted from the narrator’s childhood. Saphra’s absorbing and entertaining words paired with Mark Andrew Webber’s captivating illustrations make for an enchanting small book, plunging readers into a world Read More
This debut work of non-fiction has already received widespread critical acclaim – this year, it was shortlisted for the Wellcome Prize, and won the Wainwright Golden Beer Prize. As The Outrun is a memoir of Liptrot’s slide into alcoholism, and her efforts to remain sober by returning to the place of her birth and raising, Read More