Books, Fiction

Slam

Nick Hornby

20 Sep 2007

Sam is 15. He skates, chases girls and narrates his own coming-of-age novel. Things are going well until he gets one of those girls pregnant and is introduced to the world of adult responsibility. Plus, his father figure is a poster of pro-skater Tony…

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…

Janice Galloway interview: full transcript

4 Sep 2008

Transcript of an interview that took place in the residence drawing room of the Scotsman Hotel in Edinburgh on Friday the 22nd of August. Janice Galloway is interviewed about the first volume of her memoirs, This Is Not About Me, which covers her life…

Annie Proulx - Fine Just the Way It Is

4 Sep 2008

Fine Just the Way It Is marks Annie Proulx's return to Wyoming, the setting of two previous collections of short stories. The cast is, at once, familiar and fantastic. The devil refurbishes hell, adding to the décor centuries of portraits by mortals…

Arnaldur Indridason - Arctic Chill

4 Sep 2008

Crime fiction is routinely disregarded by literary types, but at its best it can provide the kind of sharp commentary on society that a million Oxbridge dinner party novels could only dream of. Arnaldur Indridason's Icelandic crime procedurals are…

Bat's Life - Dark Knight

17 Jul 2008

Leigh Rafferty traces the highs and lows of the caped crusader’s cultural career

Alasdair Gray Interview

20 Sep 2007

Claire Sawers meets Alasdair Gray at his Glasgow home and finds that he has created yet another iconic, naïve and semi-tragic anti-hero.

David Thewlis

6 Sep 2007

BLACK COMEDY When Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker came up with Nathan Barley on Channel 4 a couple of years back, many people were perturbed that its main sticking point was in poking fun at a group who seemed no longer ripe for satire. Surely…

Paul Auster - Man in the Dark

21 Aug 2008

In addressing the increasingly threadbare myths that America tells itself about 9/11 and the ensuing war, Auster has shed the dazzling hyper-reflexive post-modern narrative trickery he’s known for like an empty skin, revealing something tender and…

The Opposite House

Helen Oyeyemi

23 Apr 2007

SOCIAL DRAMA Helen Oyeyemi’s family left Nigeria when she was four and she draws on this experience and themes of cultural dislocation for her second novel. The Opposite House follows pregnant singer, Maja, as she tries to find ‘her Cuba’, a place…

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.

Neil Boorman

6 Sep 2007

LIFESTYLE TALE Your response to this book by London lifestyle journalist and publisher Neil Boorman is likely to correspond directly with your attachment to the very thing it challenges: brands, and the emotionally loaded consumerist machinery that…

William Gibson

23 Aug 2007

For his new novel Spook Country, William Gibson has written a frightening dispatch from the zeitgeist with a plot that’s as outlandish as the technical and cultural details are convincing. The subliminal hum of Gibson’s influence will doubtless ensure…

Nikita Lalwani

16 Aug 2007

Child prodigies are fascinating. Standing out from the crowd, kids with remarkable mathematical powers are often pushed into the limelight, but do their lives pan out any better? Or does the abnormal childhood scar them? This is the subject for Nikita…

Ruth Thomas

16 Aug 2007

Things to Make and Mend is a quiet, moving, wryly amusing work which explores themes of friendship, class and betrayal. Ruth Thomas highlights her themes through the turbulent relationship between two very different women, Rowena and Sally, who first…

Alice Munro

Canadian legend in LongPen revolution

9 Aug 2007

A standard piece of advice given to budding fiction writers eager for publication is to forget airy fairy, uncommercial notions of publishing short stories and dive headfirst into the novel.

Tibor Fischer - Good to be God

4 Sep 2008

Tyndale Corbett is worried that 'do-gooding, over-forgiving softies' have given religion a bad name. After stealing a friend's identity and fleeing to Miami to escape his dead-end existence, he wants to con a congregation into believing he's God.

Salman Rushdie

Edinburgh International Book Festival

22 Jul 2008

Salman Rushdie’s new book The Enchantress Of Florence came close to being stillborn but he believes it represents the rebirth of his talent. The writing of his 11th novel was disrupted by the exit of his fourth wife, Padma Lakshmi. Distraught, Rushdie…

Batman: Gotham Knight

DVD Review

17 Jul 2008

Intended to fill the gaps between Batman Begins and Dark Knight, Gotham Knights offers us six animated shorts, much in the same way as The Animatrix did for The Matrix. Each story is self-contained and created by a different writer (including Greg…

Donald Ray Pollock - Knockemstiff

17 Jul 2008

SHORT STORIES (Harvill Secker) Knockemstiff, Ohio, is so deprived it doesn’t register on maps anymore. This debut set of interconnected shorts about its people by former resident Donald Ray Pollock is unlikely to make anyone want to find the town…

Glen Neath - The Fat Plan

17 Jul 2008

FICTION (Portobello) The trouble with writing a novel satirising the mundanity of life and the mind numbing tedium of bureaucracy is, well, it risks being mundane and tedious. This second minimalist novel from Neath aims at the likes of Beckett…

Thomas Hettche - What We Are Made Of

17 Jul 2008

CINEMATIC THRILLER (Picador) The blurb on the flyleaf of Thomas Hettche’s German Booker prize-shortlisted novel likens his page-turning thriller to the films of David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino. Certainly, Hettche’s prose style is cinematic, not…

Various - Superman: Emperor Joker

17 Jul 2008

SUPER VILLAIN (DC) Despite an impressive writing team – including Jeph Loeb, JM DeMatteis and Ed McGuinness – Emperor Joker is a mess. This time, Superman takes on the harlequin of hate in a reality-warping tale as the Joker takes on God-like…

Last Word - Ron Butlin

19 Jun 2008

First record you ever bought ‘Nutrocker’ by B Bumble and the Stingers. A pioneering example of fusion – rock’n’roll meets Tchaikovsky. Still a landmark of tasteful desecration. Last time you were chatted up Last Saturday night! It was after I’d…

Helen FitzGerald - Dead Lovely

5 Jun 2008

CRIME NOVEL (Faber) Once I got beyond the fact that the murderer in this crime thriller-meets-chick lit novel resides on my Glasgow street, I found plenty to enjoy in Helen FitzGerald’s debut. Opening with Krissie’s confession that she’s cheated with…