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Booksrss

Nowhere to go but down

21 April 2012
Skagboys Irvine Welsh

Cape, pp.548, 12.99

I am just old enough to remember the terrific fuss that was made about the first Scots literary renaissance when it kicked into gear in the early 1980s. Inaugurated by… Read more

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Blow-out in Berlin

28 August 2010
Lights out in Wonderland D. B. C. Pierre

Faber, pp.315, 12.99

D. B. C. Pierre’s Vernon God Little was an unusual Man Booker winner (2003). D. B. C. Pierre’s Vernon God Little was an unusual Man Booker winner (2003). Not only… Read more

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Why, oh why?

14 August 2010
Pictures of Lily Matthew Yorke

Corsair, pp.311, 7.99

In my many years as a judge for the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography, I have been constantly surprised by the high proportion of books that deal with the… Read more

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Same old perversions

24 July 2010
Imperial Bedrooms Bret Easton Ellis

Picador, pp.256, 16.99

Memory Lane always looked so unthreatening to me. But this is Bret Easton Ellis, so a cast reunion for the characters he first wrote about in Less Than Zero 25… Read more

Tracks through the wasteland

21 October 2009
The Death of Bunny Munro Nick Cave

Canongate, pp.304, 16.99

Sex, and plenty of it. That’s certainly what Bunny Munro — the titular protagonist of Nick Cave’s second novel — wants. And, in a roundabout way, he gets it. In… Read more