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RBS Talks - Vicky Featherstone

Books and Reviews

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Alex Marsh - Sex & Bowls & Rock & Roll

Alex Marsh - Sex & Bowls & Rock & Roll

(3 stars)5 Jul 2010

(The Friday Project) Pooterish internet celebrity Alex Marsh (privatesecretdiary.com) features the adultescent concerns of that modern publishing anomaly, the hobbyist’s memoir (yeah, thanks Mr Hornby), in this book about rock’n’roll dreams being…

Alice Thompson - The Existential Detective

Alice Thompson - The Existential Detective

(5 stars)24 Jun 2010

(Two Ravens Press) When a work opens, as The Existential Detective does, with the lyrics to Pat Ballard’s ‘Mister Sandman’, followed by an extract from ‘The Sandman’ by ETA Hoffmann, you just know it’s going to be spine-chilling. And this is Alice…

Kei Miller - The Last Warner Woman

Kei Miller - The Last Warner Woman

(4 stars)24 Jun 2010

(Weidenfeld & Nicolson) Skipping effortlessly through a host of complex characters, with this searching and lyrical work Kei Miller achieves an incredibly engaging range of voice from the outset. Gently dropping through three generations of Jamaican…

Adam Haslett - Union Atlantic

Adam Haslett - Union Atlantic

(4 stars)24 Jun 2010

(Tuskar Rock) The post-9/11 landscape of Massachusetts in 2002 is the canvas upon which Pulitzer-shortlisted author Adam Haslett places his debut novel. With some style, he foreshadows the culture of greed and moral bankruptcy in the American…

Lars Husum - My Friend Jesus Christ

Lars Husum - My Friend Jesus Christ

(4 stars)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…

Tim Thornton - Death of an Unsigned Band

Tim Thornton - Death of an Unsigned Band

(3 stars)24 Jun 2010

(Jonathan Cape) The internal wranglings of unsigned indie bands is fertile territory for dramatic tension, as well as self-aware comedy, and so it is with this second novel from Tim Thornton, a veteran of plenty contract-free groups himself…

Don’t Look Now - Ed. Paul Newland

Don’t Look Now - Ed. Paul Newland

16 Jun 2010

(Intellect Press) Don’t Look Now is a work of low-key persuasion; it wants to convince us that seventies British cinema wasn’t an aesthetic dire strait, but a forking path of numerous possibilities. The decade may have given us film versions of On…

Christopher Hitchens - Hitch-22

Christopher Hitchens - Hitch-22

(4 stars)10 Jun 2010

Hitch-22 (Atlantic) Many of history’s key figures have contradictory sides to their nature. Churchill was a focussed leader who often sank a quart of vodka before lunch. Hitler loved animals so much he couldn’t bring himself to chomp on them, but was…

Christos Tsiolkas - The Slap

Christos Tsiolkas - The Slap

(4 stars)10 Jun 2010

(Tuskar Rock) Christos Tsiolkas may have chosen the eponymous chastisement to hang his novel on, but his engaging look at Australian life could easily have functioned without it. The slap in question is visited upon an ill-mannered child by the…

Adam Ross - Mr Peanut

Adam Ross - Mr Peanut

(3 stars)3 Jun 2010

(Jonathan Cape) A terse thriller, Mr Peanut pivots along three narrative threads, each of which takes a look at the sinister side of marriage, and two of which end in murder. That they do not become entangled is a testament to the skilfulness with…

Sam Lipsyte - The Ask

Sam Lipsyte - The Ask

(4 stars)3 Jun 2010

(Old Street) Satire has become a dirty word in Britain, devalued through excessive application to intelligent but superficial, self-satisfied observations of our uncertain times. In the US though, where The Daily Show and The Onion set the standard…

Benjamin Markovits - Playing Days

Benjamin Markovits - Playing Days

(3 stars)28 May 2010

(Faber) Though not explicitly billed as a memoir, Benjamin Markovits’ new novel appears to be largely autobiographical. A college graduate with literary ambitions, its narrator takes up a spot on a second division German basketball team, in a move…

Alan Warner - The Stars in the Bright Sky

Alan Warner - The Stars in the Bright Sky

(4 stars)20 May 2010

(Jonathan Cape) While Alan Warner has described the choice of The Sopranos to be given the sequel treatment as ‘vulgar’, he has penned a follow-up which can best be dubbed ‘tasteful’. While the chattering class of his ‘98 tale of female mayhem have…

Daniel Clowes - Wilson

Daniel Clowes - Wilson

(4 stars)19 May 2010

(Jonathan Cape) It’s heartening to know that Daniel Clowes isn’t turning his back on comics, despite writing movies in earnest since his Oscar nomination for adapting his own graphic novel, Ghost World. Clowes’ current movie projects include The…

Louise Stern - Chattering: Stories

Louise Stern - Chattering: Stories

(2 stars)19 May 2010

(Granta) Those of us in the hearing world ponder rarely on the everyday lives of our neighbours in the deaf community, where an ease in communication that we take for granted has a profound, stunting effect in its absence on the social lives of the…

Jackie Kay - Red Dust Road

Jackie Kay - Red Dust Road

(4 stars)19 May 2010

(Picador) Those familiar with Jackie Kay’s poetry and fiction will know it exudes a uniquely uplifting and rib-tickling form of optimism, and that general ambience also pervades this wonderfully engaging memoir. Kay was born in Edinburgh to a…

Austin Wright - Tony & Susan

Austin Wright - Tony & Susan

(4 stars)14 May 2010

(Atlantic) New York novelist Austin Wright created this clever, multi-layered novel in 1993, to reasonable acclaim and the acquisition of film rights. Then it disappeared, out of print and forgotten until somebody saw fit to rescue it. Which is just…

Paul Rennie - Modern British Posters

Paul Rennie - Modern British Posters

(4 stars)14 May 2010

(Black Dog Publishing) As its title hints, with allusions to the gallery and the auction house, Paul Rennie’s intellectually rigorous, aesthetically pleasing book deals with a very specific type of art in Britain from the mid-20th century. Rennie’s…

Andrew O'Hagan - The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe

Andrew O'Hagan - The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe

(3 stars)14 May 2010

(Faber) Featuring one of the more florid novel titles of the year, Andrew O’Hagan’s shaggy dog story hasn’t prevented some commentators tipping the London-based North Ayrshire-bred writer as a strong bet to reach the Booker shortlist for the first…

Simon Armitage - Seeing Stars

Simon Armitage - Seeing Stars

(3 stars)14 May 2010

(Faber) Billed as a poetry collection, this book raises one obvious question: what exactly is poetry then? For here are short tales, monologues, anecdotes and musings rather than anything approximating verse as we know it. But Simon Armitage is not a…

Marc Guggenheim & Brandon Braga - Iron Man vs Whiplash

Marc Guggenheim & Brandon Braga - Iron Man vs Whiplash

(3 stars)14 May 2010

(Marvel UK) While Iron Man 2 continues to rake in the cash at your local cinema, it seems the perfect time to dip into this new collection from Marvel and to launch a new Whiplash much more in line with the movie villain (not the old classic…

Richard Starks and Miriam Murcutt - Along the River that Flows Uphill: From the Orinoco to the Amazon

Richard Starks and Miriam Murcutt - Along the River that Flows Uphill: From the Orinoco to the Amazon

(4 stars)30 Apr 2010

(Haus) This neat little book does little to give away its contents, other than the suspicion of a jungle and an enigmatic black river. However it is well introduced by the authors and we soon involved in planning the trip which was originally…

Peter Milligan - Human Target

Peter Milligan - Human Target

(4 stars)28 Apr 2010

(Vertigo/Titan) With the Human Target TV series getting its first UK airing on the Syfy channel this month, Peter Milligan’s four-part miniseries and graphic novel Final Cut have been collected together for the first time. If you think your life is…

Jachym Topol - Gargling with Tar

Jachym Topol - Gargling with Tar

(3 stars)28 Apr 2010

(Portobello) Jachym Topol is a leading cultural figure in the Czech Republic and this fourth novel, his first translated into English, is an astute blend of the personal with the political. It’s 1968 in rural Czechoslovakia, and orphan Ilya has his…

Kirsten Reed - The Ice Age

Kirsten Reed - The Ice Age

(4 stars)28 Apr 2010

(Picador) In case you hadn’t noticed, vampires are all the rage right now. So the subject matter of Kirsten Reed’s debut novel couldn’t be more apt. A disillusioned teen, desperate for a bit of adventure, meets an older bohemian bloke she reckons…

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