Just asked my son to tell me a quick story using his imagination before he got to play computer games. This is what he said:
‘ Once upon a time you were doing really well in your writing career, Dad, then you met a rival writer in a graveyard and you killed him with a knife. You threw the knife away and no one else saw, so you got away with it. Everyone lived happily ever after except the dead guy. The end.’
Ooft.
Dx
Here are a handful of books I can’t wait to read over the next few months. I’ve already read a couple, actually, including Willy Vlautin’s amazing The Free, which is in the running to be my book of the year. Talented sod that he is. The list below also has new books from two of my favourite writers, Megan Abbott and Craig Davidson, so pretty exciting.
Aye so, here you go. There are loads more, these are just the ones that caught my eye first. Let me know what you’re looking forward to, eh?
JANUARY
Christos Tsiolkas, Barracuda (Atlantic)FEBRUARY
Willy Vlautin, The Free (Faber & Faber)
Craig Davidson, Cataract City (Atlantic)MARCH
Judith Schalansky, The Giraffe’s Neck (Bloomsbury)
Louise Welsh, A Lovely Way to Burn (John Murray)APRIL
Laura Lippman, After I’m Gone (Faber & Faber)
Luke Brown, My Biggest Lie (Canongate)MAY
Tim Winton, Eyrie (Picador)
Emma Jane Unsworth, Animals (Canongate)
Gruff Rhys, American Interior (Hamish Hamilton)JUNE
Megan Abbott, The Fever (Picador)
Anneliese Mackintosh, Any Other Mouth (Freight)
OK, so there’s a brand new short story written by me in today’s Scotsman. It’s called THE FUNERAL CRASHER, a typically cheery wee thing, and they managed to find a miserable picture of me in their archives to go along with it. (Also, as an aside, the photo is outside The Salisbury Arms, which gets a mention in the story, clever.)
Aye so, here it is. Enjoy! Would love to know what you think.
Hey folks, Happy New Year and all that. I’m gonna be on BBC Scotland’s Culture Studio with Edi Stark today at 2pm, talking about books and some other stuff that I don’t know much about. Listen up if you dare. If you miss it, I think it’ll be on iplayer here afterwards.
This is so amazing – best vocal harmonies in the world. Happy Festivus, peeps!
I don’t do music journalism anymore, and one of the nice upshots of that is that I’ve reverted to loving music like a fan again. I’ve listened to tons of stuff old and new, not being arsed about whatever is meant to be cool or hot or supposed to be written about or whatever the fuck, and it’s great.
So anyway, I’ve obsessed over a handful of albums this year. Five, in fact. I listened to each one of these continuously until I should’ve been sick of them, but I never was. They’re pretty varied, I guess, I don’t know, whatever. They’re all fairly mainstream, and I make no apology for that. The great thing in not writing about music is that I don’t have to bother explaining or describing why I love something, I just love it. That’s pretty liberating.
Aye so, here are the five albums in reverse chronological order, because that’s how they came to mind:
1. Lorde, Pure Heroine – just pure pop tunes, from a moody New Zealand teenager who got famous.
2. Chvrches, The Bones of What You Believe – electro-pop genius from Glasgow, taking over the world.
3. Low, The Invisible Way – Still creeping me out and filling my heart with their incredible harmonies, deep sincerity and less-is-more ethos.
4. Mogwai, Les Revenants – Possibly the best thing the lads have ever done, and a perfect fit for the French series it soundtracked.
5. Biffy Clyro, Opposites – It’s great to see a band you’ve loved for years and years break through into playing stadiums and shit like that.
OK, so here are my top ten novels of the year. Lemme know what you think, and what your own favourites are. I won’t write much about each here, but you can click on the book covers for my reviews in either The Independent on Sunday or The Big Issue magazine from throughout the year. Let’s do this!
1. James Sallis, Others of My Kind (No Exit)
Amazing novella about psychological and physical damage, and how we might possibly survive both and thrive. Sallis manages to pack so much into so few pages. As far as I can find, I was the only person to review this in the UK’s national press, which is a scandal.
2. Helen FitzGerald, The Cry (Faber)
Classic dilemma fiction, as a couple with a newborn baby try to cover up a terrible accident. Truly horrifying because it’s so believable.
3. Sara Gran, Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway (Faber)
Loads of authors do fucked-up detectives, but Claire DeWitt is so much more, an ultra-cool, fierce as fuck, existential force of nature. Gran is such a brilliant writer. I also read her older novel Come Closer this year, and it was extraordinarily good.
4. Alissa Nutting, Tampa (Faber)
Written from the point of view of a female teacher who abuses the teenage boys in her class. Brutal and uncompromising, a really brave piece of writing.
5. Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being (Canongate)
A poignant and life-affirming tale that spans the Pacific Ocean as well as several generations of life and loss in both Canada and Japan. Remarkable.
6. John Niven, Straight White Male (William Heinemann)
I’ve been a fan of Niven’s since his debut Kill Your Friends, but this is the first time he’s added real depth and heart to his usual coruscating satire and self-loathing. Quality!
7. Alan Glynn, Graveland (Faber)
A big but beautifully controlled narrative takes in corruption and collusion between politics, big business and the media, with some modern urban terrorism thrown in. Kind of mind-blowing.
8. David Vann, Goat Mountain (William Heinemann)
This felt like the logical end-point of Vann’s obsession with violence between fathers and sons. Intense and terrifying aftermath of a shooting trip gone wrong. Oof.
9. Derek B. Miller, Norwegian By Night (Faber)
A thriller with a difference, as an elderly man and a small boy go on the run across rural Norway. As much a character study as anything else. Lovely writing.
10. Marcel Theroux, Strange Bodies (Faber)
A very smart update of the Frankenstein story, with a handful of literary allusions thrown in. Sharp, sharp writing about identity and self.
illustration by Mitch Blunt
Aye so, here are my last proper book reviews of the year in The Big Issue, before all the ‘books of the year’ shenanigans start. Very different novels from Sarah Pinborough and Kelly Braffet, but both mighty impressive in their own ways.
The mass market paperback edition of Gone Again came out back in November, and it got a handful of very good reviews here and there. I’ve only just got round to getting them together, so here they are below. There were a couple of others that aren’t online, will try to track em down if I can be arsed.
First off, Rich Westwood over at Eurocrime loved it, saying very nice things left, right and centre.
Then lovereading made it their book of the month for November, Sarah Broadhurst using the word ‘touching’, indeed.
The Daily Express got in on the act, Thom James calling it ‘deeply compelling’, which is nice.
And The Herald did the business, referring to the novel as ‘smouldering’.
Aye so, I was asked to review this by The Independent on Sunday. I enjoyed the Wodehouse books as a kid, but I wouldn’t say I was slavishly a fan or anything. Either way you look at it, though, this ‘homage’ from Faulks is shit.
Doug Johnstone 
