Book Reviews
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Book ReviewsThe Book of Gaza: A City in Short Fiction Edited by Atef Abu Saif
Here is the latest in Comma Press’s The Book of… series, a cycle that’s taken in cities as geographically and culturally disparate as Toky... Read more »| 01 Aug 2014 -
Book ReviewsThe Matiushin Case by Oleg Pavlov
'Matiushin thought it was hilarious, everything suddenly seemed funny to him; the more hopelessly dark and confused it became, the funnier it was.' Beginnin... Read more »| 02 Jul 2014 -
Book Reviews
First Time Solo by Iain Maloney
April 1943. Eighteen-year-old Jack Devine is bound south to London to start RAF training. He dreams of playing jazz, turning girls’ heads and flying Sp... Read more »| 30 Jun 2014 -
Book Reviews
Happy are the Happy by Yasmina Reza
Yasmina Reza is well acquainted with the torments of the bourgeoisie; just watch her stage masterwork The God of Carnage for proof. So it's no surprise ... Read more »| 30 Jun 2014 -
Book ReviewsThe Glasgow Coma Scale by Neil D. A. Stewart
The novel takes its title from the system used to judge consciousness in the comatose, applying it implicitly to its characters as they first numb out and th... Read more »| 27 Jun 2014 -
Book Reviews
The Four Marys: A Quartet of Contemporary Folk Tales by Jean Rafferty
Mary Magdalene and her namesake, the Mother of God - whores and virgins, those cruel binary stereotypes. Jean Rafferty shows all those vivid hues in between in this quartet of contemporary Scottish folk tales Read more »| 05 Jun 2014
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Book ReviewsFor Faughie's Sake by Laura Marney
Glaswegian Trixie returns in this brilliant sequel to No Wonder I Take A Drink, sick of the mud, midges and cliques of Highland village Inverfaughie. In... Read more »| 05 Jun 2014 -
Book Reviews
Letters of James Agee to Father Flye by James Agee
In one of the later letters of celebrated writer James Agee to his lifelong confidant Father Flye, Agee mentions Montaigne's essay on his near-perfect, myth-... Read more »| 03 Jun 2014 -
Book Reviews
The Dead Beat by Doug Johnstone
Martha Fluke has just been assigned to the 'dead beat' – the obituaries desk of an Edinburgh newspaper in decline, and her dead father's former pl... Read more »| 02 Jun 2014 -
Book Reviews
The Last Tiger by Tony Black
The premise at least is intriguing: a family relocates from Lithuania to Tasmania in 1910. The father is a shepherd, but he’s adept at hunting Tasmania... Read more »| 02 Jun 2014 -
Book ReviewsThe Wherewithal by Philip Schultz
Henryk Wyrzykowski, 'Head Clerk of Closed Files' at a San Francisco welfare office, is translating his mother's diaries while evading the Vietnam War. An acc... Read more »| 07 May 2014 -
Book Reviews
The Quick by Laura Owen
Lauren Owen’s debut novel is an enjoyable and sometimes gripping read, set against the Gothic backdrop of Victorian England. The story begins at a... Read more »| 05 May 2014 -
Book Reviews
Caught by Lisa Moore
Lisa Moore turns the law on its head, inviting us to empathise with David Sanely, a criminal on the loose. Her novel Caught is an elaborate cat and mouse cha... Read more »| 05 May 2014 -
Book Reviews
Lexicon by Max Barry
Great sci-fi has often traded on the genre’s potential for making abstract ideas real: Philip K Dick made the question of ‘what makes us human?&r... Read more »| 02 May 2014 -
Book Reviews
Sally Heathcote: Suffragette by Mary M. Talbot, Kate Charlesworth and Bryan Talbot
The latest venture from Costa Award-winning scholar and graphic novelist duo Mary and Bryan Talbot, Sally Heathcote: Suffragette is a fast-paced romp through... Read more »| 01 May 2014