His Bloody Project was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016. Fiction often dresses up as fact. In the preface Burnet cites Gaelic Ossian poetry as a fake widely lauded for being factual, but the best fiction always does seem factual, or else it’s not worth reading. As a murder there’s no mystery. In the small crofting community of Culuie, with around 55 residents, seventeen-year-old Roderick Macrae took a croman and flaughter, a kind of pick...

I read The Power and the Glory years ago. But there’s no glory in forgetting the books I read faster than the faces I meet. If pushed I might have known it was set in Mexico and I would have remembered the main character was a whisky priest, but not that he was the narrator. What stuck was a scene in which the whisky priest comes to a small village and one of the peons that come to meet him goes back to his family and friends and urges them to...

It was difficult to pin down the picks for this week on ABCTales due to some gorgeous work. However, Story of the Week goes to Noo with ‘Suddenly’ for stunningly crafted characters and an unshakeable sense of isolation. Poem of the Week goes to ephraimcrud in what is a fine and illuminating poem with slant perspectives which resonate long afterwards. https://www.abctales.com/story/noo/suddenly https://www.abctales.com/story/ephraim-crud/where-...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08j8jj3/smile-the-nations-family-album Produced and directed by the aptly named Kath Pick this programme interested me for a lot of reasons. I’m of the not-another-fucking-baby picture generation that doesn’t feel the need to endlessly catalogue what I’ve eaten or drank or where I’m going or have been on Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms. My mobile phone isn’t very mobile. Half the time I can’t...

We’ve had a hiatus since our last abctales readings evening, but are happy to announce that we have a new event planned for London on Wednesday 10 May. It’s an opportunity for anyone to come along and read their work – poetry or prose – to a small audience of fellow writers, family, friends and lovers of literature. We hope to see some familiar faces, but don’t be deterred if you’re new on the scene – new writers and first time readers are...

It was our 27th Wedding Anniversary the other week! Hmm? No, I quite agree, you don't get that for murder these days and no, I haven't heard that one before. What did we do? Well, I guess what any long-time married couple does. We spent a considerable amount of the day staring down a manhole in our garden. Well, actually, staring was the easy bit. Thrusting a high pressure hose down there, with all of the attendant blow-back, was slightly more...

I had tears streaming down my face. Tears of laughter. This Country shows us the comic doings of Kerry and Kurtan Mucklowe and Kerry's dad Martin. Lots of good back-up bods too including big Mandy and Kerry's uncle Nugget. Uncle Nugget is soon to be released from prison but 'he was only having a laugh and 12 of the 20 people on the bus thought is was funny.' One for the nine o'clock watershed, pranks with large vehicles are not to be copied by...

Went to market... Or maybe it was a goat. I thought I was a writer but...

Poco a poco I’m working my way through Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, starting with Book 1, My Brilliant Friend . When I put it like that it seems like a chore, and that is not the case. Ferrante helps me enormously, and I guess other readers, by providing an index of characters. The first-person narrator looking back to childhood and adolescence is Elena Greco, also called Lenuccai, but known by the more popular diminutive Lenu. Elena is...

A draw that feels like a defeat. That’s how far we’ve come. The demolition of Rangers when they last visited Parkhead by five goals was comprehensive. If you can remember back to that day the big worry was that in-form Leigh Griffith was out. And Rangers would be nipping on our heels for the league. Joey Barton would be the best player in Scottish football by a mile (or so he said, but don’t misquote him). Since then Celtic have beaten Rangers...