Books, Issue 620

Preview 2009 - Local talent

MUSIC: The Phantom Band We’ve been tipping this Glasgow sextet, who make what’s most succinctly described as ‘experimental krautrock’, for greatness for a wee while now. Their debut album Checkmate Savage lands in late January, fresh off the Chemikal…

Preview 2009 - Books

It’s another hot year for the Scottish contingent with Denise Mina, Irvine Welsh and Ewan Morrison all bringing out books (July) although arguably the country’s most intriguing 2009 publication comes from Dundee debutant Gavin Bain. California Schemin…

Gemma Weekes - Love Me

‘A Big Mac and a hot chocolate please,’ comes the voice down the phone. Gemma Weekes is in McDonalds, ordering lunch, pushing her son’s buggy and doing an interview. I ask if I’m calling at a bad time. ‘No, no,’ she insists, laughing and also…

Virginie Despentes - King Kong Theory

SOCIAL MEMOIR If ever there was an antidote to the pointless posturing of the Pussycat Dolls, it’s the work of Virginie Despentes. While they embody everything that is wrong about being female in the 21st century, this controversial French author…

Brian K Vaughan & Pia Guerra - Y: The Last Man

SCI-FI Brian K Vaughn is one of the most interesting writers in comics Runaways, Ex Machina and Pride of Baghdad offering a new perspective when it comes to graphic storytelling. Y: The Last Man has been similarly praised and deservedly so. In…

Luke Haines - Bad Vibes

MUSIC MEMOIR ‘I am a cruel and pious man,’ mourns Luke Haines. History hasn’t had much time for the 90s-vintage indie iconoclast, instead celebrating the more palatable same-but-different likes of Jarvis Cocker. Yet those whose memories stretch back…

Ryu Murakami - Audition

THRILLER NOVELLA Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike’s cult favourite has all but eclipsed the psycho-sexual-thriller novel by Ryu Murakami on which the 1999 movie is based. The simple prose of Murakami’s slim volume (here translated by the author’s…

James Hider - The Spiders of Allah

WAR REPORTAGE This first book by James Hider, Middle Eastern Bureau Chief for The Times, is essential stuff for anyone concerned with the dangerous condition of the region in the 21st century — and that should be just about everybody. However, not…

Tobias Hill - The Hidden

MYSTERY DRAMA Uncovering the mystery of Tobias Hill’s new Greek-set novel is as slow and meticulous as the archaeological dig at its centre. Hill revels in detail: historical descriptions of mysterious Sparta, moments from a memory best forgotten…

Gilbert Hernandez - Speak of the Devil

CRIME One half of Los Bros Hernandez takes time off from the long-running magic realist Mexican soap opera of Love & Rockets for this nasty little tale that mixes teen melodrama with stalk’n’slash chills. It’s a crazed cautionary tale in which a…

Will Eisner - The Best of The Spirit

SUPERHERO With his domino mask, blue suit, red tie, blue fedora hat and gloves, Denny Colt aka The Spirit was what one newspaper in the 1940s referred to ‘the only real middle-class crimefighter’. Created in 1940 for a strip in a Sunday newspaper…

Gerry Findley-Day & Various - The VCs: You’re Hit, You’re Dead

SCI-FI Rebellion here reprints 2000AD’s sci-fi tale of space warfare, The VCs, for the first time, in which the Vacuum Cleaners take on the power of the alien Geek empire. Created by Gerry Findley-Day (who also created Rogue Trooper) in many ways The…