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Brian Donaldson on books by notable Scots to look out for this year.

Rhona Cameron

The Naked Drinking Club

Having dipped her toe into the literary pool with her Musselburgh memoir 7979. the stand-up comic and reality TV survivor returns with a fictional tale of a twentysomething Edinburgher getting lost and loaded in Oz. Ebury, 1 Mar.

Iain Banks

The Steep Approach To Garbada/e

Dark family secrets. a long-lost love affair and a multi-million pound gaming business lie at the heart of the bearded icon’s first novel since 2002‘s Dead Air. Little, Brown, 7 Mar.

Laura Hird

Dear Laura

Following last year’s short story collection comes this series of letters written to Hird by her late mum. June. when the former Albion Rovers member was away at university. Just in time for Mother’s Day. Canongate, 75 Mar.

Debut novelist Jennifer McCartney tells Suzanne AL Kennedy

Black wh she fell in love with literary Glasgow Day . y ' 19403 PoW Alfred Day tries to track down . . . the moment when it all went wrong for he photograph on the cover of Jennifer lelD him. The standflp comic returnsv quite M ‘Cartn‘ s first it )V"l A/l) (I has th‘ . L y.‘ ( L ~ ( ( ‘. L i literally, to her day job and delivers another author sitting on a bench holding two GO exploration Ofthe complexities of small oranges. ‘I needed a picture and only had i humankind Jonathan Cape 5Apr six to choose l'rom.’ she says. ‘lt was taken in v '

Rome in the Vatican. Orange Garden. We f picked oranges from the tree and 30 seconds I later saw this big sign that says “these are the

Pope‘s pragngCejs E (lionghtt)ulc;h”.~ Defying thhe wrat o t e at 0 1c , urc to procure w at

she hopes is a 'bizarre‘ and ‘enticing’ picture.

her choice of visual representation matches her fre.'h.‘t‘ vet" d v‘ "2 "ht l wrigngtl erg 1c an genuine tpproac o

Drawing on her own summer as a Canadian waitressing on the ‘strange and lovely’ American island of Mackinac she narrates a tale of lost love and lost youth. Approaching the events Andrew Ma" from the present and 50 years into the future, it A H’StO’Y Of MOdem Britain is reminiscent of Audrey Niffenegger’s The HOW C8“ it bethai the great DO'lllca' 7;,,,(,_T,-m.(,[[e,.'3. Wilt). visions from the post-war years onwards

McCartney earned a distinction on the “ewe been swamped by CurinSiStenCG 0” University of Glasgow creative writing course devouring iriVla? Just One tODiC laCkled (aligning her with Louise Welsh and 7.06 by the respected BBC lOUFna'iSt in W8 Sirachan). wide-ranging tome. Macmillan, 6Apr.

She recalls. ‘We‘d all go to the pub and talk about our characters like they were real people‘. Enthust by the literary scene in Glasgow and what she sees as a renaissance in Scottish writing. she is moving back to live in Glasgow permanently on the day she appears at the Aye Write! festival.

. Ewan Morrison

Swung

This self-confessed ‘erudite purveyor of filth' certainly knows how to create a buzz. With this novel about Glasgow swingers that sound should turn into a veritable cacophony. Jonathan Cape, 5 Apr.

Irvine Welsh

If You Liked School, You '/I Love Work A delightful title for Welsh's first short story collection since The Acid House with sordid tales of missing dogs. Spanish gangsters and Subbuteo legends. Jonathan Cape, 2 Aug.

Jennifer McCartney is at Aye Write! on Wed 21 Feb. Afloat is published by Hamish Hamilton on Thu 22 Feb.

15 Feb -— 1 Mar 2007 THE LIST 19