The Kellys of Kelvingrove by Margaret Thomson Davis

The past, they say, is another country – even a past as relatively close to us as 40 years ago – when a decaying Glasgow, still raw after the Ibrox disaster, was left in darkness by power cuts and shortages, while desperate ship-builders tried to save their jobs by staging a ‘work-in’ on the Clyde. However, if you’re looking for a sense of what the former Second City of the Empire looked and felt like in the early 1970s, this lazy, melodramatic excuse for a novel will be no help.

Focused on the lives and troubles of the inhabitants of Waterside Way (an imaginary terrace close to Kelvingrove Park) author Margaret Thomson Davis expects her readers to believe that this secluded group of seven houses is a hotbed for every social issue you can think of – criminality, dementia, carer stress, racial and religious bigotry, snobbery and virulent homophobia. Which might just be palatable if she hadn’t chosen to lumber her readers with the wearying, one-note Mae Kelly as a central character; or approached each and every issue with a sledgehammer of lifeless, plodding info-dumping prose. Dull, needlessly repetitive, with utterly unbelievable dialogue, this is a shockingly poor effort. [Paul F Cockburn]