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Indelible Ink: Kevin MacNeil’s ‘The Stornoway Way’
There can be little argument that contemporary Scottish fiction is Central Belt centric. Most of the tales told come from, and are normally set in, the area dissected and connected by the M8. However that situation is slowly changing and a writer who shows the way, and who has come to be one of my […]
Alistair Braidwood
April 4, 2011
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Indelible Ink: Duncan McLean’s ‘Bunker Man’
There is a quote on the cover of my paperback of Duncan McLean’s ‘Bunker Man’ from Cosmopolitan Magazine that claims ‘Duncan McLean is Scotland’s answer to Roddy Doyle’. If a fan of Doyle were to pick up ‘Bunker Man’ on this recommendation they would be in for a shock, particularly if their knowledge of Doyle […]
Alistair Braidwood
March 7, 2011
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Indelible Ink: Special Edition ‘Stuart Adamson: In A Big Country’
It’s perhaps difficult to sufficiently express just how popular Big Country were for a few years in the mid-1980s. Albums went straight to number 1, there were regular Top of the Pops appearances, they were lauded in music publications from pop paper Smash Hits to the weekly NME and Melody Maker and were also well-liked and respected by many […]
Alistair Braidwood
February 18, 2011
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Indelible Ink: Ron Butlin’s ‘The Sound of My Voice’
Ron Butlin seems to be one of Scottish writing’s best kept secrets and I don’t quite know why. Scotland is lucky to have the writers we do, and Butlin can show his medals with the best of them. He is perhaps best known as a poet, he is Edinburgh’s Makar after all, but even in […]
Alistair Braidwood
February 7, 2011
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Indelible Ink: Special Edition ‘The Year of Open Doors’
‘Novels are full of padding, they’re clearly objectionable’ Paul Reekie ‘Submission’ The above quote is one of my favourites and comes from the 1996 short story collection ‘Children of Albion Rovers’. It is the way I feel about many novels, and neatly sums up why I have such a love for the short story.
Alistair Braidwood
July 30, 2010
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Indelible Ink : Boyracers
There are many ways to start a novel, but surely one of the most arresting of recent times can be found in Alan Bissett’s ‘Boyracers’, which opens: ‘like rebel angels, bright, restless, sensually attuned to the flux and flow of mortal Falkirk, Belinda our chariot, our spirit guide, the wind rushing up and past her […]
Alistair Braidwood
July 5, 2010
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Indelible Ink : The Shoe
It has been decided by those who decide such things that there are only ever seven stories to be told. Roughly speaking these are; The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy (otherwise known as The Misunderstanding), Tragedy (or The Fall), Defeating the Monster, Rags to Riches and Rebirth. To this can be added an eighth, ‘A […]
Alistair Braidwood
June 7, 2010
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Indelible Ink : The Cutting Room
At last year’s Edinburgh Book Festival James Kelman complained that genre fiction was being packaged and promoted to the detriment of ‘literary’ fiction, such as, by coincidence, his own. His argument was that we don’t properly celebrate and engage with the country’s ‘difficult’ literature preferring the comfort of genre. He is reported to have claimed […]
Alistair Braidwood
May 3, 2010
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Indelible Ink : Trainspotting
‘The best book ever written by man or woman…it deserves to sell more copies that the Bible.’ Rebel Inc If you’re going to grab people’s attention with a cover line, that’s the way to do it. In 1993 Irvine Welsh’s debut novel ‘Trainspotting’ was brilliantly packaged to an unsuspecting public with the title in red […]
Alistair Braidwood
April 5, 2010
