Well I guess it is time for a little update. My son's dad is being the worst person on the planet. In the last month which has included our son's birthday, he has just been the meanest man ever. Who knew leaving a bad situation would just land me into another? My car broke down today, i have been told by my doctor that i need medication to keep me stable mentally and I just feel done. I feel like I am drowning. I feel not good enough to be a...

This is my second reading of Muriel Spark, The Driver’s Seat . And the third reading of the introduction by John Lanchester of this short novel or novella (100 pages) part of the Penguin Classics. You either like a story or you don’t. I didn’t like The Driver’s Seat . It has a back-to-front plot. In the first few pages the reader is told Lise will be stabbed to death. A bit like being told there’s one day to the World Cup 2026 and Brazil will...

I recently appeared on the Scots Wae Hae podcast to discuss my new book. I have attached the link in case anyone fancies listeing to it. FamilyMan has received brilliant reviews with Undiscovered Scotland saying it's one of the best crime books to come out of Edinburgh. And the Scotsman newspaper reffered to me as North Edinburgh's Tarantino. Which are wonderful compliments to receive. This is the link to the podcast interview where I discuss my...

Filed by Fletcher Moody — Literary Correspondent I went to the Old Bailey in the spring of 1895 to watch a man be destroyed, and I am ashamed to say I went eagerly. So did everyone. That was the nature of the thing. Oscar Wilde was, at that moment, the most successful playwright in London. The Importance of Being Earnest was selling out every night a few streets away, and the man who wrote it was on trial, and the city could not decide which...

Eric Manheimer is multicultural, multilingual and as he reminds readers in the title, MD. He’s a doctor. And also the director of the biggest public hospital in New York, Bellevue. What makes Bellevue different, apart from its apparent excellence, is the hospital will treat anyone who walks through its doors. Even undocumented immigrants. Manheimer and Bellevue’s ethos represents the best of America. His book was published and republished 17...

Our Story and Poem of the Month for May, very kindly chosen by RJNewlyn:

I thought myself pretty smart, when I was wee, writing my name and street and town and county (Scotland) and Europe and World and Universe. I was, of course, centre of the Jack O’Donnellian world. Just imagine if you were American President? A narcissistic psychopath that couldn’t imagine he wasn’t the centre of the world. His blot on the map irreversible. We don’t need a Galileo to show the Trumpicentric view of the universe is as crazy as it...

Filed by Fletcher Moody — Literary Correspondent In the spring of 1936, I drove down to Pacific Grove, California, to interview a writer named John Steinbeck, who had published a novel called Tortilla Flat the year before and was beginning to be discussed in the kind of rooms where writers are discussed before they are read. I had written ahead. He had agreed, with the reluctance of a man who would rather be doing almost anything else, to give...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zennor_in_Darkness Helen Dunmore (1993) Zennor in Darkness won the 1994 McKitterick Prize which is awarded for debut novels for writers over 40. Dunmore is a great example of why poets often make the best prose writers. Her protagonists are brought alive by her attention to detail. Big historical events such as the First World War in 1917 are being fought somewhere else but also in the heart. Dunmore captures girls...

How did the French Revolution effect property prices in Bristol? Helen Dunmore likes to capture lost voices. Those that do not make it into history books. Lives lived and largely forgotten. The protagonist fits a familiar pattern. Plucky female. In this case, it’s Lizzie Fawkes. Her mother is a Radical, Julia Elizabeth Fawkes. She is a writer of pamphlets that champion causes such as women’s independence, the overthrow of a system that favours...