Books and Fiction

Julian Barnes - The Sense of an Ending

Economically-told novella from the master storyteller

21 Jul 2011

(Jonathan Cape) Imprecise memory, lifelong regrets and the inconsistencies between shared histories are at the heart of Julian Barnes’ short and sharp new novella. As a title, The Sense of an Ending refers to the way in which his characters…

Michel Faber interview - The Crimson Petal and the White

The author and his wife Eva Youren on the forthcoming BBC adaptation

24 Mar 2011

‘As consumers of culture, we’re both quite cold fish,’ says Michel Faber, linking eyes over the living room with his wife, Eva Youren. She’s stretched out on a windowseat a few feet away. She nods in agreement. ‘We tend to see what the author or…

Interview: Eowyn Ivey - author of The Snow Child

Debut author discusses tale of heartbreak and hope set in 1920s Alaska

1 Feb 2012

Give us five words to describe The Snow Child? Alaskan. Wild. Magical. Rugged. Tender. Name one author who should be more famous than they are now? M Allen Cunningham. His novel The Green Age of Asher Witherow is one of the finest I have ever…

Is this a golden era for Scottish literature?

Alan Bissett, Helen Fitzgerald and Allan Wilson survey the current literary lansdscape

1 Feb 2012

Alan Bissett The contention is that Scottish literature – due to a combination of factors, including centralised buying by book chains and a backlash against post-Trainspotting fiction – has undergone a difficult time of late, but that the tide is…

Shalom Auslander - Hope: A Tragedy

Probably the funniest book that’s ever going to be written about the Holocaust

1 Feb 2012

(Picador) This is probably the funniest book that’s ever going to be written about the Holocaust. But then Shalom Auslander has previous experience of laugh-out-loud writings about Jewish guilt, paranoia, misery and self-loathing. His short story…

Philip Pullman - The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ

'The Most Dangerous Author in Britain' comes to the Book Festival

6 Aug 2010

You will know him by the horns, of course, and the casual air of unholy sin. For Philip Pullman is the anti-God and ‘The Most Dangerous Author in Britain’, according to the modern gospel of The Mail on Sunday. To most of us, however, he is the avuncular…

Helen Fitzgerald: My Last Confession

28 May 2009

Glasgow-based Aussie writer Helen Fitzgerald likes to walk a high-wire in her fiction, balancing between the two disparate genres of intelligent chick-lit and dark, violent noir crime writing. In lesser hands it could be a mess, but Fitzgerald always…

Scottish crime writing

1 Nov 2007

‘Ah, well. If you’re Scottish, and you’re writing crime fiction, at some point someone is going to hail you as “the new Ian Rankin” until they remember, no, actually Ian Rankin is still there. Alex Gray has been described as the Glaswegian Ian Rankin.

Jeet Thayil - Narcopolis

Bombay-centric social drama with tangible atmosphere but little narrative drive

1 Feb 2012

(Faber) Narcopolis begins and ends with the word ‘Bombay’. Although several individuals vie for centre stage in poet Jeet Thayil’s debut novel, the main character here is India’s most densely populated city. Viewed as a solemn and dangerous hive…

Preview of 2012 - Irvine Welsh's Skagboys

Renton, Sick Boy et al are revisited in this Trainspotting prequel

6 Jan 2012

Wonder how Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and co got to be the drugged-up life-rejecting Leith loons in Trainspotting? Well, wonder no more, as the publication of Skagboys brings us a bit more background on the individual and social circumstances revolving…

Howard Chaykin - American Flagg!

28 May 2009

With a penchant for eroticism and violence, US comics visionary Howard Chaykin is releasing another groundbreaking work. Miles Fielder chats to him.

Lars Husum - My Friend Jesus Christ

24 Jun 2010

(Portobello Books) Before authoring this, his first novel, Danish writer Lars Husum worked at filmmaker Lars von Trier’s Copenhagen production company Zentropa as a script doctor. It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that My Friend Jesus Christ has…

Stuart MacBride - Birthdays for the Dead

The tartan noir author diverges from the Logan McRae series with a compelling and brutal thriller

5 Jan 2012

(HarperCollins) A standalone diversion from his Logan McRae series of novels, Stuart MacBride once again demonstrates how he puts the grit into the Granite City. That said, Birthdays for the Dead isn’t set in Aberdeen, instead the action shifts to…

Top children's books on sale for Christmas

New titles from Jacqueline Wilson, Julia Donaldson, Francesca Simon and David Walliams

15 Nov 2011

While the December market is traditionally slow for adult fiction, when it comes to kids books, it’s a ripe old time of year. This winter there are books from some familiar names and favourite characters which won’t look bad popping out of a woolly…

Robin Robertson

Poet with an impressive range talks about his newest batch

17 Aug 2010

Though widely known as one of British publishing’s finest editors, Robin Robertson is also a highly acclaimed poet. Since his 1997 debut collection A Painted Field, he has been the recipient of numerous prizes, both for books and individual poems. Most…

Owen Sheers

Covering the poetic landscape of Britain

12 Aug 2010

One of those infuriating people whose expansive CV (poet, novelist, playwright, actor, television presenter) is matched only by their down to earth charm, Wales’ Owen Sheers will be presenting two very different projects at the Book Festival. The first…

Emily Woof at the Writer's Retreat

The ex-actress conducts a deep involvement with language

6 Aug 2010

Emily Woof first graced Edinburgh nude and on a trapeze for a trilogy of one-woman Fringe plays, under the Sex umbrella. And throughout The Whole Wide Beauty (the debut novel by The Full Monty and Wondrous Oblivion star), the loss of physical expression…

Top five Scottish crime writers to catch at the EIBF

The city that embodies vice and virtue welcomes the authors

6 Aug 2010

With its Jekyll and Hyde nature, Edinburgh is the perfect spot for the portraiturists of good and evil to congregate. Here’s a quintet of Scottish scribes to catch this week Tony Black. Gus Drury is Black’s flawed bobby and in Long Time Dead, he’s…

Trainspotting Tour

3 Jun 2010

There are few books that have changed the landscape of contemporary Scottish literature quite like Irvine Welsh’s debut novel of 1993. Over the course of two hours, you’ll spot Irvo’s flat, Sick Boy’s pub and Leith police station on your way to getting…

The Still Point - Amy Sackville interview

17 Feb 2010

A married couple is asleep in bed. Back to back, knees bending, and feet touching, ‘they form the uneven outline of an urn’. Bizarrely, they are both dreaming of the same freezing cold place, but it means two very different things to them. To Simon, the…

First Word: Jeffery Deaver

The American mystery and murder author waxes lyrical

21 Aug 2009

First record you ever bought The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Last time you were chatted up I had a marriage proposal from a woman I’d never met about two years ago at a bookstore in New York City. Does that count as chatting up? I declined.

James Lovelock - The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning

12 Aug 2009

He has been likened to ‘an Old Testament prophet’ by John Carey, identified as the creator of an ‘evil religion’ by biologist John Maynard Smith, and labelled a writer of ‘pop-ecology literature’ by Richard Dawkins. James Lovelock, veteran scientist and…

Adrian McKinty: Fifty Grand

9 Jul 2009

Seeking to avenge the death of a father she hardly knew, cop Mercado flees unrelentingly bleak Cuba for the celebrity-filled Colorado ski resort where he was killed in a hit-and-run, his demise covered up with a pay-off to the sheriff. With a luxurious…

Choke Chain - Jason Donald

19 Feb 2009

‘I found it difficult torturing an eight-year-old boy, but I knew I had to.’ The couple at the table next to Jason Donald shoot him a sideways glance over the top of their coffee cups. He definitely doesn’t seem like the torturing kind. He carries on…

Joyce Carol Oates

9 Aug 2007

The legendary French actress Jeanne Moreau once compared the versatility and precision of Oates’ writing to witchcraft. Oates once said of her own work, ‘I’m drawn to failure. I feel that I’m contending with it constantly in my own life’. This perhaps…