SRoB Blog

The first thing that is astonishing about this book is that it made me think that I understand astronomy, which is clearly not the case.   That, in itself, is a tribute to the clarity and assurance of the writing.   But this is a story about much more than astronomy, or rather where astronomy is a motor of the plot.   Jeanette is an astronomer, or rather, she becomes one because she comes to love the solitude that staring at the stars requires.   This is a story about someone growing up, and becoming the person that she is.

Jeanette grows up in an ordinary family where her sister Kate is the star.   Family life revolves, as far as Jeanette is concerned, around her sister Kate, and her swimming ambitions.   Jeanette loves her sister, but is determined not to be like her sister, which is what drives her interest in the skies, and what can be seen in them.

Paraphrasing Diderot, the late polemicist Christopher Hitchens once warned that he would “go on keeping score” about the refusal of some countries to participate in the US-led invasion of Iraq “until the last phoney pacifist has been strangled with the entrails of the last suicide-murderer”. Among the “phony pacifists”to whom Hitchens referred were a number of his former friends on the Left, now, in his eyes, as a result of their opposition to the Bush administration's “War on Terror”, apologists for authoritarianism and theocracy in the Middle East. Hitchens' post-9/11 conversion from socialism to neo-conservatism was indicative of a broader split in the Western liberal commentariat, occurring at the start of the 21st Century, over the use of American military power to 'promote democracy abroad'.

In the US, where Hitchens lived and worked, the anti-interventionist Nation magazine squared off against the interventionist Atlantic Monthly. In Britain, pro-war journalists such as David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen went up against the Independent and the New Statesman. Perhaps the most vocal opponent of American militarism in the mainstream British press was the Guardian. Indeed, due in no small part to the efforts of its comment editor, Seamus Milne, the Guardian's opinion pages became a leading international forum for criticism of British and American policy. Milne himself, in his weekly Guardian columns, led much of that criticism and was even personally admonished by Tony Blair's government when, following the fall of Kabul to NATO forces in late 2001, it prematurely declared the Afghan war a success.

It’s appropriate for Frank Kuppner’s chronicle of life that it would be both a study of the absurd and the absolute, for these are the two areas which Kuppner truly brings to life.

Review by Alan Gillespie

James Robertson’s short story collection ‘Republics of the Mind’ presents an eclectic ragbag of voices that are unexpected, unheralded and unhinged. With a shamelessly Scottish outlook, Robertson’s writing delves into the relationships we have with society, with each other and with ourselves. This is an unflashy collection, built on neither sex nor gratuitous violence, but rather a careful and honest portrayal of the way peoples’ minds work when faced with the awkward and uncomfortable truths that daily life brings.

The Eejit Pit by Jenny Lindsay; The Glassblower Dances by Rachel McCrum; Treasure in the History of Things by Katherine McMahon

Stewed Rhubarbis a small Edinburgh publisher founded by Rachel McCrum and James T Harding which specialises in publishing spoken word artists and in collaborating to create beautiful poetry objects. These three short pamphlets are the first fruits of this outfit, and very beautiful objects they are too, printed on good quality paper, and with sturdy and beautifully designed covers. Treasure in the History of Things even comes with a cd of the artist reading her poems, with music and atmospheric sounds - a very good move, reminding us that performance poetry is not the same as a reading from page poems, but a genre in its own right, with its own demands and excellences.

Read David Greig's 'Victoria Leaving' here

Cailean Gallagher wrote a fine article last year in the Scottish Review about Alasdair Gray, socialism and public libraries. I suspect that few readers and not many writers understand how rapidly our libraries are changing, and the threat that these changes bring.

Let’s start with the basics. Our libraries contain books that have been written by writers, and those writers give their permission for libraries to lend their books, free of charge, to their members. This system is known as Public Lending Right (PLR), and the writers are paid a small amount in compensation for allowing their work to be loaned in this way. I don’t know what the average payment is to writers in the UK, but it is very small, and it is under serious attack from the UK government.

‘The Hydrogen Sonata’ by Iain M Banks

Orbit Books £20.00

Angela McSeveney, Still Bristling, Mariscat Press, £5

Angela McSeveney's latest pamphlet Still Bristling (2012) covers a lot of ground, from litter-strewn rural roads to exotic tree frogs in toilets, ‘looking cute in a pool of pee.' The collection has a part humorous, part matter-of-fact feel to it, and what I admire most is its honesty and lack of pretension. The poems are more personal anecdote than lyrical discourse, so if you like poetry with a more complex agenda, chances are you'll be disappointed. Her language is conversational and prosaic, accessible and inclusive, as though the poems are small glasses from which everyone is welcome to drink. At times, however, I found this aspect of the language tricky: there's always the risk that the poem flattens out and what you're left with is prose with line-breaks or, as in ‘Scottish Climate Bill Demo', shopping-list poetry: 

The Propriety of Weeding, by Colin Will

Red Squirrel Press £6.99

The Healing of Luther Grove by Barry Gornell

Freight Books £8.99

Robyn Marsack

In the introduction to These Islands We Sing editor Kevin MacNeil lays out the brief for this anthology:

--- a remit wide enough to bring in writing from any Scottish island, but distinct enough not to include Highland or other mainland work.

After William Letford’s Edinburgh International Book Festival reading, which he shared with Cape poet Sean Borodale, one poem dominated the Q&A. ‘The light and dark of Adeona’ describes an encounter between a young man and his somewhat younger – “young for her age,” the poem notes – female roommate.

                             At breakfast, her arms and legs
                       were crossed with shallow cuts. I asked
                       if she had fallen, this gave her the chance
                       to say yes. So I watch her more closely. Not out of
                       worry, or pity, out of interest. She is a person
                       of course, but she is also a story.

Jane Rogers’s eighth novel, The Testament of Jessie Lamb, won the 2011 Arthur C. Clarke Award and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Set in a dystopian near future where pregnancy kills, a teenage girl is pulled into a sinister world of martyrdom. Rogers opened with a reading, demonstrating a story rich in ideas and heart. She captured the language of a girl burgeoning on womanhood, navigating her new reality with an inherent childlike curiosity, and pondering the extinction of humanity. But what was most striking is how close to home this story appears, perhaps a product of a narrative imbued with life’s distractions and trivialities. 

What followed was an hour rich in aphorism and warmth. Rogers enjoys writing about mother-daughter relationships, a notable theme in Lamb. In her previous novels, she has moved between various forms and settings, but this is her first dystopia. These changes seem to be part of her progression as a writer: ‘it’s nice to kick against what you’ve done before’. While she didn’t aspire to pen science fiction, she described herself as ‘absolutely thrilled’ to have this new readership. Her choice of a near future setting – just a few months from the present day – served to defamiliarise her audience from current moral frameworks.

Stefan Collini, a professor of English Literature and Intellectual History at the University of Cambridge, wants to know what universities are for – or at least, the title of his latest book suggests as much. It seemed prudent to assume this was rhetorical, but chair James Loxley, a professor from the University of Edinburgh, informed us Collini would attempt to answer. In the forty-five minute polemic which followed, Collini didn’t answer. Rather he framed the question as ‘open-ended’, offering different ways to approach our views of higher education.

Collini explored the past, present and future, interrogating the linear notion of universities as suppliers of workplace training and economic growth. He scrutinised the complexities affecting public perception, including the increase in modern institutions, the value of entrance requirements, the focus on league tables, the impact of globalisation, and of course, the perils of fees and funding. Though at times engaging and insightful, his tendency towards verbosity was a distraction – ironic given he’s concerned about the language surrounding education.

Epigenetics is an emerging scientific field, shedding light on the interactions between nature and nurture. Hosted by Richard Holloway, Nessa Carey, author of The Epigenetic Revolution partook in discussion with Paul Shiels from Glasgow University, and Steven Yearley, director of the ESRC Genomics Policy & Research Forum. The result was a series of arresting insights on the interplay between life science and society.

Carey offered an accessible breakdown of the concepts involved. Traditionally we’re taught heritable information is passed down from parent to child through eggs and sperm. We also learn the effects of the environment – such as diet, exercise and pathogens – are not passed down. But we may have to relinquish this dogma: epigeneticists posit these environmental effects can be inherited, and there is a growing body of evidence to support this.

Science and literature aren’t that different – both attempt to elucidate the intricacies of ourselves and our universe. This event saw a union of two very different authors, raising questions on the connections between fact and fiction. The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus presents a world where the language of children is toxic. In the absence of a scientific solution, the narrator attempts to make a cure. Charles Fernyhough’s A Box of Birds is narrated by a neuroscientist, questioning the cultural impact of physicalist models of consciousness. 

Both authors read extracts of their works. One page of The Flame Alphabet demonstrated a sophisticated story of a man trying to save his family. The central theme – the mephitic nature of language – echoed through the narrator’s desperate, fruitless attempts at pharmacology. Fernyhough’s piece offered a well-crafted account of a scientist, but I found his narrator a little mawkish. Nevertheless, both stories offered a jumping off point for a varied and entertaining debate on the interplay of science and fiction.

It’s by no means the first time that Janice Galloway has spoken in front of a literary Edinburgh audience, but beneath the dome of the Central Library’s Reference Library, walls of books all around her, must surely be among the most refined locations on offer in the Scottish capital. Not that Galloway was alone; on stage with her was David Robinson, literary editor for The Scotsman, and before her was a predominantly female, wine-sipping Edinburgh audience! 

Robinson introduced Galloway as “one of our finest writers” and, if there was any doubt about this in the room, it was surely flattened by her impassioned, heart-felt reading from her most recent “anti-memoir”, All Made Up; specifically, the passage when her 17 year old self and then boyfriend were advised on abstinence (until after they were married) by a Catholic GP. “Contraception. He lined the syllables up like soldiers.” The extract underlined the wit and powerful emotion that underscored a deeper, emotional truth — the experience we all share of growing up, of trying to understand the world, of becoming ourselves. 

Espionage, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is “the practice of spying or of using spies, typically by governments to obtain political and military information.” Within our popular culture, this has been crystalised into either the macho braggadocio of Ian Fleming’s James Bond, or the hypnotic mundanity of John Le Carré’s George Smiley. Yet, while both these iconic characters cast their shadows across this latest spoken word event from Illicit Ink, it’s fair to report that the eight writers who performed this evening ably demonstrated that there are more subtle-shadings to the world of espionage than you might expect.

Jennifer Bryce kicked things off amusingly with a Bond-kicking lecture for female KGB agents who must nevertheless “seduce on a budget”. However, any audience members thinking they were in for an evening of super-spy satire were swiftly pulled back by Matt Macdonald’s restrained reportage of conspiracies, paranoia and betrayal in a tale of a fear-torn imperial court and Harrigan, “the greatest assassin who might never have lived”.