Books, Doug Johnstone

Robert MacFarlane at Edinburgh Book Festival with The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot

Finding a calling in nature writing

A new generation of authors is bringing an incredible range of skills to nature writing: literary style, social observation, memoir, geology, cartography and psychology amongst them. All of which can be found in Robert Macfarlane’s remarkable third…

Authors exploring nature writing at the 2012 Edinburgh Book Festival

Jean Sprackland, Robert Macfarlane and Kathleen Jamie go outside

There has been a genuine resurgence of interest in the field of nature writing over the last decade. Allied to an increase in the number of related programmes on television, the publishing world has really embraced this renaissance, with a wider range…

Cathi Unsworth - Weirdo

Searching fourth novel examines 20 year old teen-on-teen crime in rural Norfolk

David Peace calls Cathi Unsworth, ‘the first lady of noir fiction’, and this fourth novel is a decent piece of evidence to back him up, at least in terms of the British writing scene. Set in rural Norfolk and split between events of 1983 and a cold case…

Jackie Kay - Reality, Reality

A short story outing with some beautiful moments but overall patchy quality

(Picador) In the wake of 2010’s fantastic memoir Red Dust Road and last year’s poetry collection Fiere, this short story outing has some beautiful moments in it, and Jackie Kay’s trademark compassion for her characters is intact, but the quality of…

Shalom Auslander - Hope: A Tragedy

Probably the funniest book that’s ever going to be written about the Holocaust

(Picador) This is probably the funniest book that’s ever going to be written about the Holocaust. But then Shalom Auslander has previous experience of laugh-out-loud writings about Jewish guilt, paranoia, misery and self-loathing. His short story…

Christos Tsiolkas - Dead Europe

Brutally bleak but beautiful novel, re-issued in the wake of The Slap's international success

(Atlantic) The Slap was a major breakthrough for Australian writer Christos Tsiolkas, winning the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2009 and becoming an international bestseller into the bargain. In the wake of that success, Tsiolkas’ backlist is…

Alice Hoffman - The Dovekeepers

Overworked historical drama with underdeveloped characters

(Simon & Schuster) Alice Hoffman is one of the big guns of American fiction and an Oprah favourite, but this overworked and overwrought novel rather contradicts that reputation. Set in 70AD in the aftermath of the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans…

Interview - Alan Bissett

Writer tackles Scotland’s sectarian shame in fourth novel Pack Men

With the rivalry between the Old Firm reaching dangerously manic levels recently, you’d think that sectarianism would be reflected in our nation’s fiction, but it’s hard to think of many novels that examine our unique bigotry. Step forward Alan Bissett…

George Pelecanos - The Cut

An exemplary piece of work from the writer of The Wire

(Orion) George Pelecanos has taken his foot off the novel-writing pedal recently to work in television, most notably on The Wire, but it’s good to have back ‘perhaps the greatest living crime writer’, according to Stephen King. And he’s not wrong…

Ross Raisin - Waterline

Unconvincing follow up social drama to God's Own Country

(Viking) The strength of Ross Raisin’s debut novel, God’s Own Country, was the authenticity of the central character’s Yorkshire voice, but for this follow-up Raisin has moved proceedings to Glasgow, and it has to be said that his Scottish brogue is…

Denise Mina's 'The End of the Wasp Season' is a worthy addition to the DS Alex Morrow series

(Orion) Denise Mina is one of the most interesting Scottish crime writers, continually fighting the war on cliché in terms of prose, plot and characterisation. This second novel featuring DS Alex Morrow is a consolidation of her recent move towards…

Tony Black - Truth Lies Bleeding

Fifth outing for Scottish crime writers’ Scottish crime writer

(Preface) Tony Black has a reputation as the Scottish crime writers’ Scottish crime writer, garnering praise from contemporaries to match impressive sales figures. This fifth outing demonstrates plenty of reasons why that’s the case, with fantastic…

Anne Holt sets new novel 1222 in isolated hotel - interview

The bestselling Norwegian crime writer on her latest book

An isolated hotel is the setting for the new novel by bestselling Norwegian crime writer Anne Holt. Doug Johnstone hears of a place where DNA can’t touch Sometimes it feels as if developments in forensic science have taken all the fun out of crime…

Susan Hill - The Small Hand

(Profile) Susan Hill has been writing precise and chilling books in the rather unfashionable genre of the ghost story for decades, so she more or less has it down to a fine art by now. This short and typically gothic tale demonstrates the refinement…

Jackie Kay: Finding Family

Red Dust Road is a remarkable account full of passion and humour

The ideas of belonging and identity are at the very core of what it means to be human, but those themes become much more complex when the person in question is adopted. The adopted person’s search for their biological parents is a familiar narrative…

Albanian Ismael Kadare's newest: The Accident

The author obliquely examines his homeland's paradocixal nature

Albania’s foremost literary writer and winner of the Man Booker International Prize has spent his career examining his homeland’s paradoxical nature. This latest offering from Ismael Kadare does the same but more obliquely, with a central premise that’s…

Louise Dean - The Old Romantic

(Fig Tree) There’s plenty of mileage to be had, both in terms of pathos and comedy, from the subject matter of death. Sadly, this tepid novel fails to capitalise on its dark premise, being neither moving nor funny, despite trying for both. Ken is an…

Tim Thornton - Death of an Unsigned Band

(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…

Jackie Kay - Red Dust Road

(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…

Jachym Topol - Gargling with Tar

(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…

Roddy Doyle - The Dead Republic

(Jonathan Cape) The Dead Republic constitutes the final part of Roddy Doyle’s historical trilogy, The Last Roundup, which attempts to address a century of Irish history through the irascible figure of Henry Smart. When we meet Henry, his days of…

Dan Rhodes - Little Hands Clapping

(Canongate) Dan Rhodes is a wonderful writer who seemed to spring from the ether a few years ago as a fully formed storyteller par excellence, a purveyor of the bleakest, funniest black comedy around, and an author with no obvious peers. Little Hands…

Barbera Ehrenreich - Smile or Die

(Granta) What’s wrong with positive thinking? Anyone who’s been forced on a team bonding day or made to sit through the platitudinous drivel of a ‘motivational guru’ by their employers will tell you exactly what’s wrong with it. And that culture of…

David Hughes - Walking the Dog

(Jonathan Cape) David Hughes is an illustrator, graphic designer and artist whose work is pitched somewhere in the hinterland between the poignantly funny line scribbles of artist David Shrigley and the acerbic splashes of Pink Floyd collaborator…

The Coral Thief - Rebecca Stott

(Weidenfeld & Nicolson) Paris 1815. A city in turmoil following the defeat of Napoleon, a city where lowlife scum meets high society, and a city where every conceivable historical novel cliché gets thrown at the wall to see which particularly…