Canongate Books Archives - A life in books

Cover image for That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz by Malachy Tallack

That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz by Malachy Tallack: Never too late to change

30 October 2024 / 14 Comments

I’d not come across Malachy Tallack before his second novel, That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz, popped up on NetGalley. Tallack’s a singer-songwriter as well as an established writer of books about his beloved Shetland. The blurb promised a story about a man who has spent almost his entire life in one place who finds unexpected friendship […]

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Cover image for Barcelona by Mary Costello

Barcelona by Mary Costello: A curate’s egg

20 March 2024 / 19 Comments

I was surprised and delighted when a proof of Mary Costello’s new short story collection popped through my letter box. I’d had no inkling that there was a new one on the horizon from her. Academy Street, her 2014 novella, is one of my favourite books, epitomising the spare, quietly understated style I so admire.

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Cover image for To the Dogs by Louise Welsh

To the Dogs by Louise Welsh: ‘Corruption doesn’t happen in a vacuum’

17 January 2024 / 12 Comments

Having enjoyed last January’s The Second Cut, Louise Welsh’s sequel to The Cutting Room, I couldn’t resist To the Dogs, particularly after visiting Glasgow in June. Welsh’s new novel follows ambitious vice chancellor Jim Brennan, called away from Beijing when his son is arrested on a drugs charge. He had forgotten how afraid he had

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Cover image for The Caretaker by Ron Rash

The Caretaker by Ron Rash: The unravelling of deceit

22 November 2023 / 18 Comments

I tend to bracket Ron Rash’s Appalachian novels alongside Kent Haruf’s Holt series – both explore big themes on a small canvas; both are carefully expressed – which is why I put up my hand for The Caretaker as soon as I spotted it. Set in 1951, during the Korean War, it has at its

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Blasts from the Past: The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Stephen Sherrill (2000)

4 August 2023 / 23 Comments

This is the latest in a series of occasional posts featuring books I read years ago about which I was wildly enthusiastic at the time, wanting to press a copy into as many hands as I could. Stephen Sherrill’s debut was much talked about just after I started work as a reviews editor. I wasn’t

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Idol, Burning by Rin Usami (transl Asa Yoneda): ‘My life without him was only an afterlife’

11 November 2022 / 12 Comments

I’ve long felt uneasy about the relationship between celebrities and the public, not least the way the media refers to them by their first name as if we know them intimately. It’s particularly painful when the celebrity in question was a child star. Rin Usami’s Idol, Burning examines that relationship through a young girl who

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Total by Rebecca Miller: Written with a filmmaker’s eye

7 October 2022 / 14 Comments

I was stunned to find two decades had passed since I’d read Personal Velocity, Rebecca Miller’s first collection. Time does funny things as you get older. Perhaps better known as a filmmaker, Miller adapted both her short stories and her equally enjoyable novel, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, for the screen. Comprising seven stories,

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Cover image for The Second Cut by Louise Welsh

The Second Cut by Louise Welsh: Rilke’s return

2 February 2022 / 14 Comments

I was the reviews editor at Waterstone’s Books Quarterly when Louise Welsh’s The Cutting Room was published 20 years ago. I wasn’t particularly inclined to read it, not being a crime fiction fan, but of course needed to for work and what a treat I’d have missed if I hadn’t. The star of the show

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Cover for Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden

Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden: ‘Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think’

29 January 2021 / 18 Comments

I don’t think a novel’s title alone has convinced me I’d want to read it before but I couldn’t resist that wordplay: Mrs Death Misses Death promised to be clever, funny and all about a subject we privileged Westerners do our best to sanitise with all sorts of euphemisms. Salena Godden’s debut rubs our faces

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Mr Cadmus by Peter Ackroyd: Something of a surprise

14 October 2020 / 30 Comments

Back in the very early days of this blog, I reviewed Peter Ackroyd’s Three Brothers having not read anything by him for quite some time. I ended the review wondering if it was time to read his more recent novels. Seven years later, Mr Cadmus turned up. This prettily presented novella, all set to be

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Oligarchy by Scarlett Thomas: Sharp, funny and very, very dark

15 November 2019 / 16 Comments

It’s been well over four years since Scarlett Thomas’ The Seed Collectors was published. Since then she’s produced three children’s books. I’d been eyeing the schedules hoping for another adult novel, wondering if her writing career had taken a permanent turn when Oligarchy turned up. This short, biting novel should please Thomas fans with its

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