Dear Scotland

Novels set in Glasgow often play up to the grittier side of the city. Ever since the success of ‘No Mean City’ writers would ramp up the violence, hard drinking and gang culture as if these were somehow unique to my home town. But in the last 20 years there have been many Glasgow novels [...]

Novels by rock and pop musicians are a mixed bag. For every success such as ‘And the Ass Saw the Angel (Nick Cave) or ‘I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive’ (Steve Earle) there’s an unreadable, if admirable, attempt like ‘Tarantula’ (Bob Dylan), or something ludicrous such as ‘The Adventures of Lord Iffy Boatrace’ [...]

John Burnside recently won the T.S. Eliot prize and the Forward prize for his amazing poetry collection ‘Black Cat Bone’. In 1988 his debut book of poetry ‘The Hoop’ won The Scottish Arts Council Book Award. In between he has published eight novels and 13 collections of poetry nearly all of which won awards of [...]

Over the months I’ve written about some difficult and disturbing books. Duncan McLean’s ‘Bunker Man’ immediately springs to mind, but perhaps Toni Davidson’s 1999 debut novel ‘Scar Culture’ unsettles more than any other Scottish novel I have read. It’s never as salacious as McLean’s novel often becomes, but like ‘Bunker Man’ it deals with abuse; [...]

When these columns started in November 2009 I suggested that there was a noticeable change happening in Scottish writing, and attempted to answer why. Here’s a short excerpt to give you a flavour: ‘You can argue the reasons for this new confidence in Scottish writing, when it began, or even if it exists at all, [...]

There are a few Scottish novelists I would recommend to any aspiring writers who are looking for inspiration in terms of style and technique. These include A.L Kennedy, James Kelman, Alan Warner and Ali Smith. But top of that list would be Agnes Owens. If you want an example of how to tell stories simply [...]

In today’s cultural climate a novel called ‘The Existential Detective’ could be said to have a double handicap in reaching a readership before it begins. Those who are set against the genre of crime fiction will see the word ‘detective’ and decide it’s not for them, similarly the term ‘existential’ puts many people in fear [...]

There is a lot of alcohol in Scottish fiction, as there is in Scottish fact. Often this becomes an easy stereotype used to denote not only nationality but also social status. There is a belief that alcohol abuse is one of the boxes to tick in the ‘urban, gritty, working class’ novel, but this doesn’t [...]

Alan Spence is one of those writers who seems to stand apart from other contemporary Scottish writers. I’ve been thinking about why this might be, and I think it is a matter of style. If you think of the adjectives that are most often applied to modern Scottish fiction they will include; grim, gritty, urban, [...]