celticman's blog

Doug Johnstone keeps things simple. Two word titles his specialities. Hurting and fucked up families, his mainstay And a protagonist that’s so fully formed her or him steps out of the pages and into your life. Here it’s Finn Sullivan. He’s idling a few hours at Kirkwald Airport in Orkney, which is small as a bedsit. Johnstone’s novels usually take place in Edinburgh or that nook of the world. But ‘Orkney was so stunningly beautiful, like God...

What's Up Docs? https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002wxsx the podcast where identical twin doctors Chris and Xand van Tulleken cut through the confusion around every aspect of our health and wellbeing. In this episode, Chris and Xand explore the lymphatic system, from its vital everyday functions supporting fluid balance and immunity to its more mysterious roles. They look at what happens when things go wrong, examine popular wellness claims...

How many languages can you speak? Read and write in? I do a passable impression of English. That’s about it. Eliska Tanzer, birthplace was Drovane. She was brought up in a Romani ghetto in Slovakia. Therefore, she can speak Slovak and Romani. She learned the language of dance from her mother, Lenka, a prostitute but continued to fail to learn their family trade and couldn’t blow a banana. Franz Volker was East German before he was German. So...

Did you pass the Scottish nationality test? I just managed it. Went to bed at 11.30pm and was up again for 1pm. Scotland were playing Haiti in Boston at 2am. That’s our time. Not US time. My favourite girl in the world, Tilly, aged eight, was allowed to watch the game with her dad, but Finn, aged three, was encouraged to sleep through the festivities in his Scotland top and shorts. It’s been a boon time for the bars. The game being on BBC meant...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Edna O’Brien’s The Light of Evening follows a familiar mother-daughter path. Dilly is dying in a Dublin hospital. Her daughter, Elenaora, has inherited her beautiful hair, which features in every novel. A writer whose debut novel scandalized her Irish neighbours, and an ultra-Catholic nation because it showed women’s desire from the inside. She has fled to London and married an older man (who already had a wife and child). Her dad is a brute...