Books and Fiction

Aleksandar Hemon: Love and Obstacles

10 Aug 2009

Too tightly weaved together for your average collection of short stories, but containing sections too complete to be mere chapters in a standard novel, Love and Obstacles is a staggering achievement for this Bosnian American writer. His fourth literary…

Alistair Morgan: Sleeper’s Wake

10 Aug 2009

This is a breathtaking debut novel from a young South African writer which asks deep questions about grief, pain, love and life, and does so in a story that is almost unbearably tense and fraught with unspoken, complicated emotions, yet is also…

Chris Longmuir - Dead Wood

10 Aug 2009

This debut Scottish crime novel deals with some hard-hitting subject matter – serial killing, prostitution, drugs, organised crime – which makes its lacklustre nature all the more frustrating. Set in Dundee, we follow single mum and part-time hooker…

Anne Tyler - Noah’s Compass

10 Aug 2009

Baltimore story-maker Anne Tyler delivers book number 18 here, about a retired teacher suffering from amnesia. Sixty-year-old Liam Pennywell likes keeping things simple. Jam sandwiches for lunch, generic French bistro posters decorating his bland, boxy…

Words and Pictures

David Peace and Garrison Keillor celebrate fiction and adaptation

4 Aug 2009

Writers David Peace and Garrison Keillor will both be making an appearance at this short season celebrating fiction and adaptation. Peace will be talking about The Red Riding Trilogy and Keillor will be talking about A Prairie Home Companion. There…

George Dawes Green - Ravens

30 Jul 2009

It has been 14 long years since we were gripped by George Dawes Green’s best-selling novel The Juror, so this follow-up has plenty to live up to. Thankfully, Ravens delivers – and then some. Set in the deathly quiet US town of Brunswick, it tells the…

AL Kennedy - What Becomes

30 Jul 2009

Glasgow writer and sometime comedian AL Kennedy does nothing to overturn her reputation as a miserablist in this latest collection of short stories. Through a litany of everyday tragedy, marriages crumble, feelings are trampled on and lives are lost as…

Mathias Malzieu - The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart

30 Jul 2009

Perhaps the most fantastical thing about this book is its depiction of an Edinburgh where a tumble-down old house owned by a woman who births the children of prostitutes and unfaithful women sits at the top of Arthur’s Seat. In any event, it’s the…

Adam Thirlwell's latest novel - The Escape

23 Jul 2009

There’s a scene at the end of Adam Thirlwell’s The Escape in which its British Jewish protagonist Raphael Haffner attempts to explain the concept of a draw in cricket to an American friend. This idea acts as a neat allegory of the book’s plot, in which…

Magnus Mills - The Maintenance of Headway

23 Jul 2009

It’s questionable what’s more unlikely about this sixth novel from Magnus Mills: that he’s managed to eke out 136 pages about the delicate art of driving a bus, or that he succeeds so well in making the job’s habits and peculiarities seem like a…

Liam McIlvanney - All the Colours of the Town

23 Jul 2009

In an age in which the sins of our politicians provide regular column inches and minimal shock value, Liam McIlvanney successfully delivers a powerful thriller, rich in colour and skilfully imagined. Jobbing political hack Gerry Conway is in a bind when…

Paul Cornell & Leonard Kirk - Captain Britain and MI13: Secret Invasion & Hell Comes to Birmingham

23 Jul 2009

The first two compilations of TV-writer Paul Cornell’s new run on Captain Britain kicks off during the huge Secret Invasion. Neatly setting itself in the Marvel universe, Cornell (whose credits include Doctor Who, Robin Hood and Coronation Street) has…

Conman - a comic thriller by Richard Asplin

23 Jul 2009

Comic memorabilia shop owner, young family man, and general nerd Neil Martin finds himself in a rollicking British fix: the stock-filled basement of his shop has been flooded and he’s been less than scrupulous with his insurance payments. Enter…

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…

Thomas Pynchon: Inherent Vice

9 Jul 2009

Less than half the length of his last 1000-page tome and riffing on the relatively straightforward hardboiled crime genre as opposed to the exhausting literary mash-up of Against the Day, Thomas Pynchon’s seventh novel is the reclusive author’s most…

Chloe Aridjis: Book of Clouds

9 Jul 2009

The Scottish climate comes in for a fair bit of stick but if Book of Clouds is to be believed, there’s more to dreichness than we think. Chloe Aridjis’ Berlin is awash with the wet stuff, from torrential downpours to misty masses. Tatiana is a young…

Chika Unigwe: On Black Sisters’ Street

9 Jul 2009

The depiction of modern prostitution is often one-dimensional, something this skilled new writer is seeking to address. Chika Unigwe is Nigerian-born but now lives in Belgium, the setting for this evocative and heartfelt novel. Four African women share…

Various: Wasted No. 2

9 Jul 2009

More Scottish comic action this fortnight with the second issue of Wasted. Much like its predecessor Northern Lightz, it’s a cheeky selection of comedy shorts from names such as Alan Grant, John Wagner, Jamie Grant, Alan Kerr, Curt Sibling, Dave…

Comics in Scotland: Oxfam Bookfest

9 Jul 2009

Whack! Bang! Wallop! There’s ample reason to don the lycra this fortnight as Oxfam’s Bookfest celebrates comic writing in Scotland. Ferg Hadley (Spiderman, Marvel UK) and Dave Bishop (ex-2000AD and Dr Who) talk comic book writing and graphic novels…

Also Published: 5 Upcoming Novels

28 May 2009

David Peace Occupied City Back home in his native Yorkshire, the Damned United author delivers the second of his Tokyo stories with Japan now in its third year of US occupation. Faber, 6 Aug. Thomas Pynchon Inherent Vice The reclusive scribe…

Chuck Palahniuk: Pygmy

28 May 2009

Having tackled the taboo subject of porn in his last book Snuff, Chuck Palahniuk’s tenth novel sees the controversy-courting author moving onto another no-no topic with this wickedly witty tale of terrorism in the American heartland. A terrorist attack…

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…

Various: Khaki Shorts

28 May 2009

More underground comics action pierces your mind as Khaki Shorts returns after a two-year hiatus. It’s a distinctly Glaswegian title (with just a dash of Edinburgh wit) packed with acidic humour ranging from sci-fi pastiche to police action with…

Margaret Elphinstone: The Gathering Night

14 May 2009

Margaret Elphinstone has carved out a fine career as a purveyor of excellent historical novels, but for her latest offering she’s done something a bit different and gone prehistoric. The Gathering Night is set in Mesolithic Scotland, somewhere between…

Colm Tóibín: Brooklyn

14 May 2009

Times are tough in Enniscorthy, a small job-scarce town in the south-east of Ireland where idle gossip and parish dances are the only entertainment on offer for the young and restless. Instantly likeable leading lady Eilis Lacey’s life is turned upside…