Fiction

Mike Mignola gets back to the drawing board with Abe Sapien, Hellboy and BPRD

24 Jun 2010

Miles Fielder chats to writer and artist Mike Mignola about the expanding world of his demonic offspring and literally getting back to the drawing board

Howard Chaykin - American Flagg!

28 May 2009

With a penchant for eroticism and violence, US comics visionary Howard Chaykin is releasing another groundbreaking work. Miles Fielder chats to him.

Julian Barnes - The Sense of an Ending

Economically-told novella from the master storyteller

21 Jul 2011

(Jonathan Cape) Imprecise memory, lifelong regrets and the inconsistencies between shared histories are at the heart of Julian Barnes’ short and sharp new novella. As a title, The Sense of an Ending refers to the way in which his characters…

Preview of 2012 - Irvine Welsh's Skagboys

Renton, Sick Boy et al are revisited in this Trainspotting prequel

6 Jan 2012

Wonder how Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and co got to be the drugged-up life-rejecting Leith loons in Trainspotting? Well, wonder no more, as the publication of Skagboys brings us a bit more background on the individual and social circumstances revolving…

Trainspotting Tour

3 Jun 2010

There are few books that have changed the landscape of contemporary Scottish literature quite like Irvine Welsh’s debut novel of 1993. Over the course of two hours, you’ll spot Irvo’s flat, Sick Boy’s pub and Leith police station on your way to getting…

Scottish crime writing

1 Nov 2007

‘Ah, well. If you’re Scottish, and you’re writing crime fiction, at some point someone is going to hail you as “the new Ian Rankin” until they remember, no, actually Ian Rankin is still there. Alex Gray has been described as the Glaswegian Ian Rankin.

First Shot: Just Say Aye - an extract from Irvine Welsh's Skagboys

A sneak peek inside the Edinburgh author's Trainspotting prequel

26 Apr 2012

We head oot and dive oantae a 16, bound fir Johnny’s pad at Tolcross. It’s a blindin hot day so we sit doonstairs at the back for a better view ay the passin fanny. Back top deck wi Begbie, tae intimidate wideos, back bottom wi Sick Boy tae leer at…

Interview: Irvine Welsh on Trainspotting prequel Skagboys

The new book, Leith, Twitter and the importance of subcultures

25 Apr 2012

Early on in our transatlantic phone conversation, it suddenly becomes unclear whether I’m chatting to Irvine Welsh or Frank Begbie. When I ask whether he might well be the busiest man in Scottish culture right now, the response comes over loud, clear…

Crime books round-up – March 2012

Doug Johnstone, Alex Gray and Mari Jungstedt deliver new crime novels this month

17 Feb 2012

As if to show that fiction readers love a good bit of murder and mystery, death and deceit, blood and booze, there’s acres of it about to be scattered around the nation’s book shelves. Doug Johnstone (of this parish) parks his Hit and Run (Faber) at our…

Padgett Powell, author of You & I - interview

The writer follows up his postmodern 'questions' novel with a book-length dialogue

18 Oct 2011

When Padgett Powell was a boy, he knew little of the settled life. With a trucker father, his family was constantly on the move and he reckons that he attended ten different schools and lived in 17 houses during his perpetual-motion upbringing. Perhaps…

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…

EIBF 2011: five lengthy literary works

featuring Adam Levin, Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, Stephen King and Tolstoy

24 Aug 2011

The Instructions The story of a megalomaniac 10-year-old boy who may or may not be the messiah takes place over the course of just four frenetic days, but Levin’s massive book takes in Israel’s battle for existence and an entire religion’s search for…

Laura Barton talks about Twenty-One Locks

The author describes why and how she wanted to write her novel

6 Aug 2010

Born and raised in Lancashire, Laura Barton migrated south a decade ago, and found gainful employment with The Guardian. ‘I started writing a music column [Hail, Hail, Rock ‘n’ Roll] in a style that was quite different to most journalism at the time,…

Chris Cleave - Gold

Well-timed Olympic-themed novel fails to fulfill the promise of its intriguing premise

22 May 2012

There’s something intriguing about the mindset of those athletes who are honed from a very young age into Olympic machines. Lives are altered irrevocably in pursuit of a small gold disc and the too-fleeting associated glory: a strange, self-obsessed way…

John O'Farrell - The Man Who Forgot His Wife

Mildly diverting rom-com novel from the Spitting Image writer

28 Feb 2012

(Doubleday) What would we make of our partners if our memories were wiped and we spied them anew? This question loiters, doe-eyed, at the heart of John O’Farrell’s retrograde amnesia rom-com, The Man Who Forgot His Wife. It’s a light-hearted…

Interview: Eowyn Ivey - author of The Snow Child

Debut author discusses tale of heartbreak and hope set in 1920s Alaska

1 Feb 2012

Give us five words to describe The Snow Child? Alaskan. Wild. Magical. Rugged. Tender. Name one author who should be more famous than they are now? M Allen Cunningham. His novel The Green Age of Asher Witherow is one of the finest I have ever…

Jeet Thayil - Narcopolis

Bombay-centric social drama with tangible atmosphere but little narrative drive

1 Feb 2012

(Faber) Narcopolis begins and ends with the word ‘Bombay’. Although several individuals vie for centre stage in poet Jeet Thayil’s debut novel, the main character here is India’s most densely populated city. Viewed as a solemn and dangerous hive…

Michel Faber interview - The Crimson Petal and the White

The author and his wife Eva Youren on the forthcoming BBC adaptation

24 Mar 2011

‘As consumers of culture, we’re both quite cold fish,’ says Michel Faber, linking eyes over the living room with his wife, Eva Youren. She’s stretched out on a windowseat a few feet away. She nods in agreement. ‘We tend to see what the author or…

Sue Townsend - Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years

30 Oct 2009

(Michael Joseph) Reneging on her statement that 2004’s Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction would be the final Mole book, Sue Townsend has returned to her most enduring creation in his 39th (and a quarter) year. That he’s back at all is…

Interview: John Irving

Exploring the tragedy and death of the American author's work

15 Oct 2009

In the closing chapter of John Irving’s epic new novel, Last Night in Twisted River, a character struggles to find the opening line for his latest book. He agonises over it for a morning, then puts it to one side – and 24 hours later hits pay…

Geoff Dyer - Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi

19 Mar 2009

EXISTENTIAL TALE Jeff Atman is a middle-aged freelance journalist with a wickedly humorous and cynical outlook on life. We meet him in London, frustrated and world-weary, as he prepares to embark on a press junket to Venice for the Biennale…

Joyce Carol Oates

9 Aug 2007

The legendary French actress Jeanne Moreau once compared the versatility and precision of Oates’ writing to witchcraft. Oates once said of her own work, ‘I’m drawn to failure. I feel that I’m contending with it constantly in my own life’. This perhaps…

Iain Banks - Stonemouth

The spiritual follow-up to The Crow Road is slightly flawed, but still a page-turner

27 Mar 2012

For those Iain Banks fans not overly keen on his sci-fi work, it will be a blessed relief to see no mention of a middle initial ‘M’ in his name here. For those who loved the prickly relationships and family machinations in the smalltown Scotland of The…

Peter Carey - The Chemistry of Tears

Moving portrait of grief and genius from the twice Booker-winning author

16 Mar 2012

(Faber) Grief haunts the pages of Peter Carey’s new novel, the twice Booker-winning author painting a compelling picture of all-consuming love in the 19th and 21st centuries. Catherine Gehrig is an horologist turned museum conservator who, following…

Decembrists singer Colin Meloy writes children's book Wildwood

The novel is the product of collaboration with his wife Carson Ellis

9 Mar 2012

Wildwood is the debut illustrated children's novel from husband-and-wife creative double act Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis. Meloy is probably best known as the lead singer of US indie-folk group The Decembrists (for whom Ellis supplies album artwork).