Books
The Skinny book guide – bringing you book reviews, features, events, reviews and author interviews. Find previews and on the ground reporting from festivals of literature and poetry in Scotland and beyond.
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FestivalsUnbound 2013: Events Listings
Be Unbound every night of the Edinburgh International Book Festival in the Guardian Spiegeltent, Charlotte Square Gardens. Events start at 9pm, and are free and unticketed. Best get there early if you want a seat Read more »| 02 Jul 2013 -
Book ReviewsPlan D by Simon Urban
Plan D imagines a modern day East Germany in which the Berlin Wall never fell. Trapped inside the socialist state, citizens are subject to the same clo... Read more »| 01 Jul 2013 -
Book ReviewsCotton Tenants by James Agee and Walker Evans
James Agee was a protean genius, mastering every form he tried, whether poetry, film criticism, the novel, screenwriting, or journalism. But in his greatest ... Read more »| 01 Jul 2013 -
Book ReviewsThe Blue Hour by Alonso Cueto
Winner of the Herralde Prize for the Spanish original, The Blue Hour is an unconventional love story set against the backdrop of a country recovering from a ... Read more »| 01 Jul 2013 -
Book Reviews
Drowntown: Book One, by Robbie Morrison and Jim Murray
Co-creator of Nikolai Dante and Japanese Dredd-spinoff Shimura, Robbie Morrison has been making an impact on UK and international comics since... Read more »| 24 Jun 2013 -
Book ReviewsThe Quarry by Iain Banks
Eighteen-year-old Kit and his dad, Guy, live in a house on the edge of an expanding quarry. Kit has Asperger’s; Guy has cancer. It’s quite funny,... Read more »| 22 Jun 2013
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Book Reviews
All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld
It feels as though Evie Wyld may be writing the kind of novel series that is tied together not by recurring characters or plots, but by landscapes, themes an... Read more »| 13 Jun 2013 -
Book Reviews
All The Little Guns Went Bang, Bang, Bang by Neil Mackay
“Blood’s everywhere,” says Pearce Furlong, one of the two 11 year old protagonists in Neil Mackay’s splendid debut. “Most peopl... Read more »| 10 Jun 2013 -
Features
Evie Wyld: Into the Outback
We steal some time from Evie Wyld's cultural expedition of Vietnam to ask her about her new novel, All the Birds, Singing, the enduring Australian landscape, and what animal she would most like to be Read more »| 10 Jun 2013 -
Features
Neil Mackay: Why Children Kill
Multi-award winning investigative journalist, broadcaster and documentary maker Neil Mackay has spent years reporting on the people at the centre of crime and violence. A good background, you might think, for his debut novel... Read more »| 07 Jun 2013 -
Features
David Gaffney and Nicholas Royle: Head to Head
Authors David Gaffney and Nicholas Royle appear at Didsbury Arts Festival this month. Gaffney's sometime collaborator Sarah-Clare Conlon chairs a discussion between the two as they debate long versus micro fiction, and the influence of place on writing Read more »| 06 Jun 2013 -
Book Reviews
Here and Now: Selected Letters 2008-2011 - Paul Auster and J.M. Coetzee
Here and Now collects the correspondence between Paul Auster and J.M. Coetzee, two writers who occupy similar constellations in the literary imagination, wri... Read more »| 05 Jun 2013 -
Book Reviews
The Folded Man by Matt Hill
Matt Hill's debut novel – a dystopian satire in the sharp, graphic style of transgressive fiction, with a central character who thinks he's a mermaid &... Read more »| 03 Jun 2013 -
Book Reviews
Dirty Work by Gabriel Weston
Dirty Work follows the tribunal of young doctor Nancy after performing an abortion leaves her frozen and unable to help the patient bleeding to death before ... Read more »| 31 May 2013 -
Book Reviews
The Professor of Truth by James Robertson
In The Professor of Truth James Robertson again proves himself to be one of Scotland’s best writers and one of the best writers in the world at explori... Read more »| 29 May 2013