Events
BORDERS Highlights
books-musicovideo-cafi
6.30pm M0" Exclusive! Ian Rankin
28th Feb author of the bestselling Inspector Rebus series and Stuart Hepburn screenwriter of the forthcoming Rebus TV series. will be in conversation with Brian Donaldson of The List at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. Tickets £2
Twenty five years ago, Victor lara the legendary folk singer. was murdered by the military in Chile. Join Joan .lara. his English widow and first President of the Chile Committee for Human Rights as she discusses her book. Ari Unfinished Song.
6.30pm Fri 3rd Mar
The monthly Books, Music, Film & TV Quiz in the cafe, with free entry. great prizes for teams of up to four.
7pm Sat 11th Mar
Enjoy a glass of wine with
Janet McBain. Curator of the Scottish Film and Television Archive, as she discusses the archive‘s work preserving Scotland‘s rich film heritage.
7pm "Dues 14th Mar
5pm Fri 17th Mar
his bestselling autobiography. Mr Nice.
Exclusive! Where are the ashes of Boris Karloff scattered? Want to retrace the steps of Edward Woodward on
The Wicker man trail? Where is Wit/mail & [is ‘Crow Cragg"?
Allan Foster, author of The Movie 'l'ravellei; presents info for all movie fans.
7pm Tues let Mar
7pm Wed 22nd Mar
Exclusive! Scottish Launch of the paperback edition of
Andrew O’Hagan’s Booker shortlisted debut novel. Our Fathers.
Due to its incredible success. Robert Knox’s Cabaret in the Cafe has moved to a prime Saturday Night slot. Discover the best new local talent in music, peifomiance poetry, spoken word performance and stand up comedy. [Warning: This event may contain strong language]
8pm Sat 25th Mar
Howard Marks will be signing copies of
For more information 98 Buchanan Street, Glasgow G1 3BA
0141 222 7700
8am to 10pm Monday to Wednesday 8am to 11pm Thursday to Saturday, 10am to 9pm Sunday
94 THE U81 l7 Feb—2 Mar 2000
books
review
CONTEMPORARY PULP
Hitman Max Kinnings (Flame £9.99) ‘k t i *
This bizarre slice of surreal pulp fiction is best described as a meeting of the minds of Elmore Leonard and Timothy Leary. Hitman tells the story of a slacker private detective making an easy liVing from an eccentric paranOid millionairess who is hiding out in a London tower block. That all ends when she drags him and his drug- addled friend Luke into a series of murderous situations.
lvlax Kinnings' debut is a return Visit to the place Bukowski tried to take his readers in his last great novel Pulp. Rich in detail and an urban absurdity that can only come from a score and ten years of London alienation, Hitman refuses to cater to the Violence obsessed attention-defiCit crowd. Kinnings is constantly pulling out his intellectual green card With references to Patti Smith and Roman Polanski.
Bonkers as y0u like and more fun than chasmg the dragon With the Happy Mondays. (PD)
SHORT STORIES The Dance Settee And
Other Stories
Ruth Thomas (Polygon £8.99) ****
An air of melancholy pervades Ruth Thomas’s second collection of short stories. They do not work because of their tWists or hooks or barbs. These are fragments of life which work because they grasp yOu in the c0ils of their atmosphere; the dampening sadness of everyday llVlng.
They are stories of people who are innocent in their actions, or at the mm of loss or realisation that they are not about to achieve all their ambitions. Yet there is hope in Thomas’s v0ice. The stories are not tragedies, even if they are not comic. They leave you knowmg that the adroitly constructed protagonists will attain strength from their naivete, or fresh ambitions to achieve.
But be warned; these tales are so rich in atmosphere that to consume them all at once will make them cloying. They need to be sav0ured, as treats for when times are morose. (TD)
huge, but empty, cellu|0id empire — as they search for each other through the
FUTURISTIC COMEDY Future Eden
Colin Thompson (Simon & Schuster £9.99) it at
Alice In Wonderland, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy and Gormenghast, these are the works Future Eden is compaied to in the blurb. Nothing like setting the reader up for a big disappointment, eh7 There are elements of these great novels in the book, but it is essentially a pale imitation.
Set in 2287, the plot revolves around a bizarre group of travellers - including an alien in the body of a chicken, a Frankenstein—type monster and an Oracle in the form of a goldfish in search of a way to recreate The Perfect Hour, a time when the entire world was at peace Only when this is accomplished Will mankind be saved from extinction.
The plot has holes that you could fly a spaceship through, and the humour is flimsy at best. This is Thompson's 24th book, and one gets the distinct impre55ion his heart is no longei in it (KK)
MUSlCAL EPIC The Ground Beneath Her Feet
Salman Rushdie (Vintage £6.99) ****
Salman Rushdie is probably the best known name in writing today, for all the wrong reasons With The Ground Beneath Her Feet however, he confirms his place at the apex of British writing for all the right reasons. A master of the art of storytelling, he creates a layered maze of relationships using language of a calibre rarely seen With this coruscating, stylish novel.
The story unravels the love story of Vina Apsara and Orinus (arm, a tale that crosses the boundaries of normal realities. Set in the heady and vulgar world of rock ’n' roll, Rushdie completes a solemnisation of the rites of a relationship, unbalanced in a mu5ica| sense but true to anyone who believes in undying love.
To complement the labyrinthine tale, the sparkling Wit of the conversational prose pulls y0u in, wanting you to reach for the next page before finishing the last. If you've never read O Rushdie, this is yOur starter for ten ! (AB)
MILLENNIAL SATIRE 5 Miss Wyoming ' Douglas Coupland (Flamingo £9.99) 1, ****
Take some of America’s craziest obsessions, film stars and beauty pageants. Add a sprinkling of mid- West’s barren landscape together With two drifting characters, who should technically be dead. What you are left with is somewhere near to the strange and compelling world according to Douglas Coupland.
Miss Wyoming is a novel about Susan Colgate - Wyoming’s former child Beauty Pageant Queen and minor soap star — and John Johnson — a drug- addicted movie mogul Jaded by his