Books

Lost World by Patricia Melo

1 Oct 2009

Casually brutal and utterly uncompromising, this Brazilian noir thriller is nerve-shreddingly compelling from start to grizzly finish. A sequel to The Killer, Patricia Melo’s 1995 novel, Lost World picks up the story of amoral ex-contract killer Maiquel…

First Word - Peter Hook interview

24 Sep 2009

Founder of Joy Division, and bassist with New Order, Peter Hook lets off some steam about music piracy. First record you ever bought. ‘Ride a White Swan’ by T Rex. Now that was very, very long time ago. Last time you were chatted up. Tragically, I…

Colm Tóibín - Brooklyn; Patrick McCabe - The Holy City

23 Sep 2009

Colm Tóibín’s and Patrick McCabe’s latest novels – both written during Ireland's 'Celtic Tiger' boom years and published this year – are two very different beasts.

Books hitlist

23 Sep 2009

Nick Cave The Death of Bunny Munro is only veritable polymath Cave’s second novel, presumably, the band, the film scores and the film scripts all kind of got in the way a little bit of him getting round to another one until now. Here he reads from it…

Lorrie Moore - A Gate at the Stairs

23 Sep 2009

(Faber) Lorrie Moore is a writer who doesn’t exactly believe in rushing things. Not only is A Gate at the Stairs her first book since her 1998 short story collection Birds of America, but it seemingly takes an eternity to get anywhere, steadily and…

Filthy English by Peter Silverton

Comprehensive history of swearing lacks humour

17 Sep 2009

Swearing is a universal phenomenon. The delivery, meaning, intent and pitch may vary – some might mouth a silent ‘fiddlesticks’ while others erupt with a string of expletives so incomprehensible it’s difficult to discern the exact meaning – but we all…

Dark Entries by Ian Rankin and Werther Dell'edera

The crimewriter turns to comics

17 Sep 2009

Ian Rankin isn’t the first author to turn his hand to comics, with names as diverse as Jodi Picoult and Michael Chabon all having had a go. In fact he isn’t even the first Scottish crime writer to script a John Constantine story, with Denise Mina having…

Eddie Campbell

The comic artist/writer brings his life's work together

17 Sep 2009

Glasgow-born, Brisbane-based Eddie Campbell is best known for illustrating From Hell, his and writer Alan Moore’s exhaustive graphic novel investigation of the Jack the Ripper murders. It’s the Oz-based ex-pat’s autobiographical comics, however, that…

Will Self - Liver And Other Stories

Moments of brilliance are too often lost

17 Sep 2009

'If you are offended by a certain four letter word beginning in 'c' and ending in 't',' Will Self addresses his salt-and-pepper Edinburgh Book Festival audience, 'I suggest you leave now. If you are of a nervous or emotional disposition, I suggest you…

Also published: Books

It'd be criminal to miss out on these

17 Sep 2009

Stieg Larsson The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest The third volume of the bestselling Millenium Trilogy has Lisbeth Salander fighting corruption as she is set to face trial for three murders. Maclehose Press. Ruth Rendell The Monster in the…

Snark by David Denby

Entertaining history of unnecessary written abuse from the New Yorker critic

17 Sep 2009

There’s little doubt that the information superhighway, as no one calls the internet these days, has revolutionised the way we communicate, think and act. But for each benefit to any seismic social shift, there are a myriad of downsides which need to be…

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffeneger

Disappointing ghost story from The Time Traveller's Wife author

17 Sep 2009

Like her debut novel The Time Traveller’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger’s new offering requests from her readers some suspension of disbelief. When bookseller Elspeth dies, she leaves her plush Highgate flat to her American twin nieces, the daughters of her…

Diana Athill, Paddy Doyle and Iain Banks set for Wigtown Book Festival

15 Sep 2009

Tucked away on the Galloway coast, pretty little Wigtown is home to one of Scotland's worst kept literary secrets. After a bumper year in 2008, the annual Wigtown Book Festival looks set for its busiest year on record, with more than 170 events over 10…

Nick Hornby - Juliet, Naked

11 Sep 2009

(Viking) Never meet your heroes, we are told, they’re bound to be a disappointment. But what happens when you’re going for a run in a dead-end English seaside town and you bump into an ex-girlfriend who introduces you to your all-time, number one icon?

Edinburgh: International Storytelling Festival

With the literature celebration coming up, we explore why everyone loves a good story

10 Sep 2009

There are few people who can turn down an intimate offer of: ‘Can I tell you a story?’ They can be fanciful, creepy, true-to-life or utterly ridiculous tales – but, then, it’s not so much the content we thrive on, it’s the physical and emotional act of…

Hitlist: Books

3 Sep 2009

Mary Brennan As Scottish Ballet opens a new chapter on its story with a move to Glasgow’s Tramway, The Herald dance critic celebrates the company’s many successes as she talks about her lavishly illustrated book, Scottish Ballet: Forty Years.

Also published: Books

The comedians turn to literature this week

3 Sep 2009

Jack Dee - Thanks for Nothing, Jo Brand - Look Back in Hunger, Dara O’Briain - Tickling the English, Justin Lee Collins - Good Times, Peter Kay - Saturday Night Peter

Jah Wobble - Memoirs of a Geezer: The Autobiography

3 Sep 2009

Within the first paragraph of this look-back over a particularly distinctive life and musical career, John Wardle has been born in Stepney, E1. And within the first page-and-a-half, his mum has had their house exorcised (but not a ‘full-on pukka…

Val McDermid - Fever of the Bone

3 Sep 2009

Staying true to gruesome form, the first murder in the Fife crime novelist’s latest slice of Tartan Noir could’ve been committed in 1880s Whitechapel. After the body of a young girl is found with her genitals removed, psychological profiler Tony Hill…

Trust Me by Peter Leonard

Elmore's son serves up his second crime thriller

3 Sep 2009

Having crime-writing legend Elmore Leonard as your dad is a lot to live up to, but with this bristling second fiction outing, son Peter almost keeps up the family name. Set in Detroit, with a cast of hapless, amoral baddies, his relentlessly-paced noir…

Off the Page

Stirling's book festival

3 Sep 2009

Book lovers are set for a treat this month as a flurry of leading authors make the trip to Stirling. A week-long jamboree of literary lovelies, this year’s line-up includes Ian Rankin, Rodge Glass and ex-WPC Karen Campbell. The kids should be kept…

Richard Williams - The Blue Moment

26 Aug 2009

It’s the only jazz album that legions of non-jazz fans possess. It helped define a cultural era and raked out a path for much of what followed. When Miles Davis marched his merry band into a converted Manhattan church in the spring of 1959, even the…

Also published: 5 Unit-Shifters

26 Aug 2009

Dan Brown The Lost Symbol You may have heard of his last book, The Finchley Coat or something. Bob Langdon is back with more ‘history, codes and intrigue’. Some copies are expected to be sold. Bantam Press. James Patterson Alex Cross’s Trial…

Charlie Higson - The Enemy

26 Aug 2009

(Puffin) Take a dose of 28 Days Later, touches of Survivors and Escape from New York and the author’s already-proven track record in writing adult genres for a young audience with the Young Bond series, and you have an impressive first instalment in…

Valerie Martin - The Confessions of Edward Day

24 Aug 2009

(Weidenfeld & Nicolson) Valerie Martin has had great success as a purveyor of historical fiction, most notably with Mary Reilly, her retelling of the Jekyll and Hyde myth, and her Orange Prize-winning American slavery tale Property. This outing into…

Nexion

24 Aug 2009

Another dispatch from the world of Scottish underground comics, this time all under the watchful eye of Curt Sibling as he gathers a selection of depraved and funny shorts for the first issue of his Nexion anthology. It has much in common with several…

Eleanor Catton - The Rehearsal

24 Aug 2009

(Granta) Eleanor Catton’s debut novel is a labyrinthine tale of a high school sex scandal, exploring the ways in which it becomes part of the pupils’ lives and is purloined by students at the nearby drama school who use it for their end of term play.

Kids events at the Edinburgh Book Festival

Some big names are rolled out for the final week

23 Aug 2009

With the final embers of the Book Festival starting to do that fading away thing, there are some sparkling treats to occupy the bairns with before Charlotte Square Gardens loses the tents. The Gruffalo’s Birthday (30 Aug) has writer Julia Donaldson and…

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.

Hitlist: Books

The best of the literary fest

21 Aug 2009

Suhayl Saadi, Frank Gardner, Steve Toltz, Tobias Hill, Susie Orbach, Mark Millar, Douglas Coupland

Top 5: Authors You'll Have Seen on Telly

Charlotte Square's more recognisable faces

21 Aug 2009

Pauline McLynn It’s probably the kind of thing that really irks an author trying to break out from the shell of their most recognisable role, but with McLynn, all you can really think about is Mrs Doyle determinedly offering a cup of tea with the words…

Hitlist: Around Town

The best events, books and LGBT

21 Aug 2009

Sheep Heid Inn Summer’s End Beer Festival, Launch of SEEDBOM, Bletherheads, Jeffrey Lewis’ Watchmen, Handmade Heaven, Mary Brennan, Dead Girls’ Dance Club

Five questions: Margaret Elphinstone

21 Aug 2009

The ancient history of Scotland is a subject which fascinates Margaret Elphinstone and provides the basis for her fiction. Here, she dips into our Q&A Give us five words to describe The Gathering Night? Our hunter-gatherer past in Scotland. Which…

Bletherheads

Literary and performance talent on the cheap

21 Aug 2009

Why would you bother forking out your last twenty quid for a probably patchy big-name comedian when you can see the cream of Scotland’s literary and performance talent, live, for less than the price of a fish supper? The increasingly ubiquitous…

David Simon/Richard Price

From Baltimore to Edinburgh

21 Aug 2009

OK, so if you didn’t know it by now, The Wire is officially ‘the best TV drama series ever made’. Everyone from Jay Z to George Osborne have professed their love for the now defunct Baltimore show while arts journalists at The Guardian are forced to…

The Generation Game: Douglas Coupland

18 years after his breakthrough, the Generation X author, provides us with a sequel. Of sorts.

20 Aug 2009

Fans and critics have known it was coming for months, with rumour and misinformation clogging up chat rooms and columns. Now that Generation A is finally set to be unleashed upon the reading public, we’ll see if the furious debate will have been…

Planet of the Shapes: Susie Orbach

The bestselling psychotherapist on body fascism

20 Aug 2009

In 1978, psychotherapist Susie Orbach wrote the bestselling Fat is a Feminist Issue, warning against dieting, and outlining the compulsive behaviour linked to eating disorders. Fast forward 30-odd years, and have we paid heed to her warnings? In her…

Jason Donald

Opening doors in other people’s memories

20 Aug 2009

‘The reaction to Choke Chain has been positive and often emotional,’ says Glasgow-based author Jason Donald, whose first novel was published earlier this year. His debut is a tender, at times uncomfortable, coming-of-age tale of two brothers growing up…

Steve Toltz

Succeeding with slices of lick and portions of skill

20 Aug 2009

Steve Toltz has been a private detective, a cameraman, an English teacher and telemarketeer, but now the author is doing what his Australian mates have been doing for years: turning up at the Edinburgh Festival. Toltz, whose chunky first novel A…

Tobias Hill

Exposing demons through vigorous research

20 Aug 2009

There’s a fascination with secrets in the works of Tobias Hill. His 1999 début novel, Underground, depicts the unseen world beneath the streets of London, and The Cryptographer, from 2003, features a code breaker caught in a futuristic web of lies and…

Sara Maitland

The cultural history of quiet contemplation

20 Aug 2009

‘We generally tend to be very romantic about silence. People say, “wouldn’t it be lovely to be silent”, but then they don’t do anything to make it happen.’ Having hitherto led a noisy family-filled life as both a prize-winning novelist and outspoken…

Iain Banks - Transition

18 Aug 2009

Iain Banks’ words have a habit of getting inside your head with certain phrases, ideas and characters left tunnelling their way into the consciousness long after you’ve put his books down. Latest offering Transition is no different. While his writing…

Books - 5 crime paperbacks

18 Aug 2009

Susan Arnout Smith - Out at Night The follow-up to the author’s The Timer Game debut, this presents a complex tale of farming wars with the genetic versus organic crops brigades going to battle. Perennial. Dan Waddell - Blood Atonement A second…

Evie Wyld - After the Fire, A Still Small Voice

18 Aug 2009

(Jonathan Cape) After the Fire, A Still Small Voice suffers from the same problem as its title; too long and too obscure. Evie Wyld, a graduate from a creative writing Masters in London, sets her début novel in the wide open spaces of her native…

Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

18 Aug 2009

ALAN MOORE & VARIOUS (DC/Titan) In 1985 the Superman titles were reset at issue one, meaning there would a final issue of Superman and Action Comics in the old numbering system (this kind of intricate continuity is a recurring facet of the…

Khaki Shorts

18 Aug 2009

We return to the grimy world of Khaki Shorts as their rebirth continues for another dose of Scottish underground comics action. This second issue of their ‘reboot’ is as scatological in its humour, style and subject matter as last issue in its…

Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?

18 Aug 2009

NEIL GAIMAN & VARIOUS (DC/Titan) In 2009 and after Grant Morrison’s apocalyptic run on Batman, two monthly titles, Detective Comics and Batman, have been put on hiatus. So who better than Neil Gaiman to write the final two-part story? Again looking…

Top 5 authors with three names

14 Aug 2009

For some writers, a middle initial just isn’t enough to get across their need for a slightly longer name than is the norm. Here’s a quintet of triple-monikered authors: George Dawes Green Two events from the tri-titled New York chap, firstly…

Kids Events at the Book Festival

The events and authors for the younger generation

14 Aug 2009

Old favourites for kids include Michael Morpurgo (22 Aug), Malorie Blackman (22 Aug), Jacqueline Wilson (23 Aug), Anne Fine (23 Aug), Julia Donaldson (24 Aug), and Terry Deary of horrible history stardom (28 Aug), but there’s a whole lucky-dip of events…

Top 5 Things To Do This Week

14 Aug 2009

Bloody Beetroot (clubs), Inglourious Basterds (film), Emergent Artists (Visual Art), Soulsavers (music), Christopher Brookmyre (books)

Beatrice Colin: A History Maker

The author speaks of how contemporary Scotland influences her novels of Europe's past

13 Aug 2009

Beatrice Colin’s entry in the Book Festival catalogue describes her as a ‘debut novelist’, which may confound anyone who’s encountered The Luminous Life of Lily Nelly Aphrodite. The Glasgow writer’s huge, beautiful 2008 novel takes in Berlin from…

5 Questions: Helen Fitzgerald

13 Aug 2009

Give us five words to describe My Last Confession? Menacing, funny, fast, twisted, gripping. Which authors should be more famous than they are now? I love the multiple layers in Kate Atkinson’s stories and think she should be even more famous…

Courtyard Readings

13 Aug 2009

Hey! Yeah, you there, with the furrowed brow, the fistful of flyers and the crazed, distracted look. Listen, put down the Fringe Guide – it’s okay, just for an hour – and tuck yourself away in the soothing environs of the Scottish Poetry Library’s…

Frank Skinner

13 Aug 2009

He may now be in his 50s, but there’s no real sign of Frank Skinner slowing up. The cheeky Midlands chappie has delivered his memoir of life back on the stand-up circuit, On the Road, and in this List-sponsored event you can expect the honesty and…

Xiaolu Guo

Creating political parables out of flying saucers

12 Aug 2009

After her reading at the Book Festival last year, Chinese author Xiaolu Guo spent a lot of her Q&A session chatting about the literary headaches, not to mention boredom, created by translating from her first language, Chinese, into English. She had gone…

Suhayl Saadi

Spanning the Scottish Highlands and the wilds of Pakistan, his new novel is a weighty affair

12 Aug 2009

‘Epic’ and ‘ambitious’ are adjectives often bandied about in the description of novels that in fact display very little of either. That’s not an accusation you could level at Joseph’s Box, the sprawling, expansive, strange and moving new novel by…

Sharon Olds - American Literary Legend

12 Aug 2009

It’s time to assess the sins of the father – and the mother. And there’s no one better to do so than one of America’s most influential poets, Sharon Olds, as famous for her tough stylistic swagger as her unflinching mind. Olds was born in 1942 and is…

John Aberdein - Strip the Willow

12 Aug 2009

Think you can handle pressure? Try following an award-winning debut. John Aberdein kept a cool head when it came to writing Strip the Willow however, despite the huge anticipation for the novel as a result of excellent first offering Amande’s Bed. ‘Some…

Rebecca Gowers

12 Aug 2009

‘How you write about a woman somewhere in her 20s without being labeled chick-lit, I don’t know,’ says Rebecca Gowers, frustrated by the fact that her novels are so often lumped into the genre of pastel-covered books all about modern ladies cooing over…

James Lasdun - The Art of the Short Story

12 Aug 2009

Over the years James Lasdun has turned his pen to novels, screenplays, travel writing, journalism and poetry, but short stories are his current medium of choice, having recently published his third collection, It’s Beginning to Hurt. Lasdun suggests…

Chika Unigwe

Learning how much shame there is in luxury

12 Aug 2009

The depiction of prostitutes in fiction can be a one-dimensional affair, but not in Chika Unigwe’s poignant and moving novel On Black Sisters’ Street. Unigwe was raised in Nigeria, but has spent the last decade in Belgium, and it was a culture shock…

Top 20 Festival Shows

12 Aug 2009

Emmanuel Jal There are few people who could even imagine the terrors of being a child made to fight in a war-torn homeland. This guy has lived it and come through the other side. Jen Hadfield In a year of poetry shocks, this Shetlands-based…

5 paperback thrillers

12 Aug 2009

Burial by Neil Cross, Geezer Girls by Dreda Say Mitchell, Death Trip by Lee Weeks, Hit and Run by Lawrence Block, The Clayton Account by Bill Vidal.

The Amazing Spider-Man 600

Dan Slott, John Romita Jr & Various

12 Aug 2009

The 600th issue of any title is cause for celebration, particularly as iconic a character as Marvel’s mascot Spider-Man. The lead story from Dan Slott, with art by John Romita Jr, re-introduces arch villain Doctor Octopus (plus another big return, but…

Maria Tecce – Viva!

12 Aug 2009

You could probably throw a Liza Minnelli biography down the High Street and you’d hit someone who’s starred in a Broadway show – such are the numbers of Yank showtune belters here, fighting for an audience to bellow at in August. Thankfully the cream…

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…

Book Festival day planner

Our guide on the festival's must-see events

10 Aug 2009

As with most of the festivals, the Book Festival is a scary prospect at first glance. Here, Lizzie Mitchell maps out a plan which should make the minefield a little easier to negotiate. All events are based in Charlotte Square Gardens.

Mio Matsumoto

Sketching a spiky ode to recovery

10 Aug 2009

Never before has cancer looked so cute. But then, it’s the gift of artists to transform the brute chaos and fear of everyday life into objects of delight. This is what Japanese graphic artist Mio Matsumoto does with My Diary. On the surface it’s a…

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…

Garrison Keillor

10 Aug 2009

For a man so hometown America he bleeds apple pie, Keillor is cited less often as an incisive wit and social commentator. His treacly, mid-western baritone might not be the acerbic voice of political dissent but in his books and his celebrated…

Book Festival Hitlist

9 Aug 2009

Janice Galloway, Emmanuel Jal, Jen Hadfield, Dave Gorman, Mio Matsumoto, David Aaronovitch, Denise Mina

Top 5 food events at the Edinburgh Book Festival

There’s nothing like a book event to get your tummy rumbling

9 Aug 2009

Tom Kitchin The Michelin-starred, all-too aptly-named chef must feel like the cat who nabbed the cream as he launches his first cookbook From Nature to Plate. 17 Aug, 2.30pm, £9 (£7) Sue Lawrence The 1991 victor of Masterchef has produced a…

Tariq Ali

Merging a passion for politics with love of literature

7 Aug 2009

Protocols of the Elders of Sodom was published recently, and reads like a ‘best of’ of Tariq Ali’s musings on a few giants of world literature. Taken from articles and essays written over the past 30 years for Time Out and The Guardian among others, the…

Ben Moor

Magical realist storytelling from Festival veteran

7 Aug 2009

‘It’s good to do it again after four years, in front of a live audience,’ says writer/comedian Ben Moor, as he prepares to perform from More Trees to Climb, his recent collection of short stories. Adapted from three of his one-man shows, Moor emphasises…

Ian McMillan

Home truths from Yorkshire poet

7 Aug 2009

‘Times are good,’ says Ian McMillan on the poet’s lot, with the articulate and enthusiastic Yorkshireman saying it in a voice that’s gently encouraging. ‘It’s easier than it used to be when I started. There are magazines, you can self-publish or publish…

Denise Mina

How real events inspired crime fiction

7 Aug 2009

Denise Mina has been busy. In the last couple of years she has shown real versatility by branching out into drama, with her plays Ida Tamson and A Drunk Woman Looks at the Thistle being successfully produced at Glasgow’s Oran Mor. She has also braved…

David Aaronovitch

How paranoid ideas shaped modern history

7 Aug 2009

It’s easy to assume that conspiracy theorists are odd, simple, lonely blokes who still live with their parents and spend far too much time on the internet. But in truth, they’re usually otherwise normal, intelligent and rational people. Author…

David Bainbridge

Debunking the myths surrounding teenagers

7 Aug 2009

Vilified, hated, dismissed, feared and ridiculed, with a reputation blackened beyond damage limitation by even the deftest of spin doctors. Teenagers may be the least fashionable or genial of causes to champion, but that is exactly what David Bainbridge…

Eleanor Catton

Exploring the personality-shaping notions of adolescence

7 Aug 2009

Eleanor Catton’s The Rehearsal is a study of and search for reality. Following a group of teenage girls as they attempt to navigate adolescence with its attendant agonies and anxieties, it delves into the labyrinthine and precarious relationship between…

Gerald Scarfe

7 Aug 2009

He’s been like a massive pin sticking holes in the authority’s swollen balloons for five decades now, and Gerald Scarfe’s political cartoons show little sign of having the edge taken away from them. He studied with Ralph Steadman and counts Pink Floyd…

Bound by the Apron Strings

Well-kent Scottish faces wax nostalgic about their favourite childhood foods in a new book

6 Aug 2009

Sue Lawrence clearly loves the warm waft of nostalgia emerging from the kitchen door. In interviewing over 70 prominent Scots including Gordon Brown, Andy Murray and Gordon Ramsay for her new book she has given them a topic few would be reticent about…

First Word - Allegra McEvedy

6 Aug 2009

First record you ever bought Ian Jury and the Blockheads’ ‘Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick’. Last time you were chatted up I don’t think I’ve ever been chatted up. I’m more of a predator. First film you saw that really moved you I think it…

Home truths

From fish factory worker to TS Eliot Prize-winning poet, Jen Hadfield talks to Kirstin Innes

6 Aug 2009

It’s been a strange old year for poetry. Although the highs of Carol Ann Duffy’s appointment as the first female Poet Laureate and the unpleasantness of Ruth Padel and Derek Walcott’s fight for the Oxford Professor of Poetry position have almost…

Dave Gorman

A one-man innovative juggernaut going coast to coast

6 Aug 2009

Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure is ostensibly the story of a comedian travelling the world trying to establish disparate pairings of words that return just one hit in the search engine. ‘Essentially a show about me having a breakdown’, is how Gorman…

Five festival over-achievers

6 Aug 2009

Robin Ince One can only assume that Robin Ince sits in a thick blue funk for that small portion of the day when he isn’t A) hosting a ‘lunchtime celebration of science and the wonderful’, B) being a ‘bleeding-heart liberal’ or C) opposing ‘the moral…

5 Questions: Carol Ann Duffy

6 Aug 2009

Glasgow-born Carol Ann Duffy may be a tad busy being Britain’s Poet Laureate at the moment, but she still found time to answer our 5 Questions

5 Questions: Helen Oyeyemi

6 Aug 2009

Give us five words to describe White is for Witching? Quaint, little, antique, quince, spoon. Which authors should be more famous than they are now? Jesse Ball, the consistently amazing Chicago-based poet and novelist. Samedi the Deafness and…

Word Power Book Fringe

6 Aug 2009

Helen FitzGerald (reading Fri 14 Aug) is just one of the great lineup of local and international authors on at our favourite local book shop Word Power’s Book Fringe this year. Other readers include Tom Leonard (Fri 21 Aug), Allan Massie (Thu 13 Aug)…

Fictionalised history

A review of David Peace's Occupied City

4 Aug 2009

The theme of defeat has been central to the work of David Peace but has never been more potent in this, the second of his Tokyo trilogy. The Damned United featured loss at the heart of Brian Clough’s 44 days in charge of Leeds United while GB84 probed…

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…

Tank Girl: Three - Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin

30 Jul 2009

Back in the 90s there was one woman who encapsulated the spirit of the age, the epitome of cool that was Tank Girl. This irascible, boozing, bonking and brawling babe who took no shit from nobody sprang from the fevered minds of writer Alan Martin and…

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…