BOOKS | Reviews BOOKS | Reviews POLITICS / HUMOUR ALLAN BROWN Fifty People Who Screwed Up Scotland (Constable) ●●●●●
To criticise this book for being sour, petulant and pusillanimous would be to miss the point. Brown’s shtick is snark and he’s sticking to it. Indeed the whole series to which this high-pitched jeremiad belongs depends upon a certain sixth-form iconoclasm. It’s not so much telling truth to power as saying yah boo sucks to you.
So who are the 50 perfidious individuals who ruined Scotland? Given Brown has previously written on contemporary Scottish comedy, restaurants and music, it is of little
surprise that we have here denunciations of Gordon Ramsay and Nick Nairn, Billy Connolly and Ricky Gervais, Stuart Adamson and Alex Harvey. I wholeheartedly commend Brown for supporting the SNP’s green agenda by recycling so much material. But there are also chapters, particularly on writers – Kelman, McIlvanney,
Conan Doyle, Burns, MacDiarmid – that seem to reveal a scribbler unacquainted even with Wikipedia. There is no show without Punch, and of course, Brown punches at
nationalism in general and Salmond in particular. His piece on Salmond is singularly sly. ‘Race is the sole criterion for inclusion in his panoply of glory’, Brown types. Now, this is not the kind of book that has footnotes, but evidence as well as assertion might have been useful. But forget the politics or culture, there are many reasons not to buy this book. It is dreadfully written, full of factual errors and, frankly, a joke. But on the author, not his supposed targets. (Stuart Kelly)
HORROR DBC PIERRE Breakfast With the Borgias (Hammer) ●●●●● FICTION NIKESH SHUKLA Meatspace (HarperCollins) ●●●●●
DEBUT NOVEL CARYS BRAY A Song For Issy Bradley (Windmill) ●●●●●
Part of a series commissioned to reinvigorate the literary reputation of Hammer, the former home of classic British horror, this is a beautifully written, creepy and funny novella by the Booker-winning author of Vernon God Little. Sticking close to genre conventions,
Pierre’s story involves computer programmer Ari Paneck, who finds himself stuck in an eerie, run-down guest house with no phone signal or internet when his flight from Boston to Amsterdam gets grounded by bad weather on the Essex coast. After several baffling encounters with the only other guests, the eccentric and dysfunctional Borders family, Paneck begins to realise the extent of his helpless isolation, and where it may lead. Pierre evokes the walled-in nightmare scenario perfectly. There is a problem though: it’s
not particularly scary. Rather it is a fascinating, occasionally chilling tale about our increasing dependence on devices; a theme set up by the potent opening line, ‘Technology is the way, the truth and the life’. (Paul Gallagher)
44 THE LIST 12 Jun–10 Jul 2014
Meatspace is very much concerned with the internet and the ways it affects our social lives. Kitab is a semi- successful writer who soon finds his online life in tatters after his namesake tracks him down through Google, begging for a place to stay. Unfortunately, this central ‘Kitab 2’
plotline doesn’t really go anywhere. At several points it is set up to become a cautionary tale of identity theft and the perils of broadcasting your every move to the world, but it never follows through, and you’re just left wondering why Kitab keeps allowing this annoying and unbalanced creature into his life.
Where the book scores highest is in its critique of our digital culture, skilfully articulating that unsatisfying, disconnected feeling you can get from too much time spent interacting through screens. Even here, though, it hammers its points home, and the constant namechecking of every app and social network that can be crowbarred into the narrative is often irritating. Meatspace is not without entertainment value, but it’s ultimately a frustrating read. (Ally Nicholl)
Deftly juggling five characters’ perspectives, Carys Bray’s first novel is an intimate portrait of grief and faith – but it’s also sharply funny. Read it if you want to know what a ‘dirty sandwich licker’ is. Issy Bradley, youngest daughter in a devout Mormon family, dies suddenly. In a fog of depression, her mother retires to bed and won’t get up – leaving her Mormon bishop husband and their three remaining children to agonise over Issy’s death and question the strength of their beliefs.
Bray herself was brought up in a Mormon family before leaving the church in her early 30s, and she also lost a child to illness. Many of the book’s strongest scenes have the bitter sting of authenticity. Condolence card messages sent to the Bradleys are painfully, realistically inappropriate, and church teaching sessions on chastity are depressingly believable.
Her prose could occasionally be leaner, but Bray is a bold writer. And for all its sadness, A Song for Issy Bradley is an embracing, life-affirming read. (Yasmin Sulaiman)
FICTION LINDA GRANT Upstairs at the Party (Virago) ●●●●●
It’s the early 1970s and a glamorous androgynous couple known as Evie / Stevie appear on campus. To students experimenting with radical ideas, the pair symbolise all that lies in the future, until tragedy intervenes. For Adele, Evie becomes a lifelong obsession, but it is only later in life, when examining the events of the past, that Adele finally comes to understand her.
Upstairs at the Party is a haunting
novel full of characters that disappear only to reappear somewhat changed later on. It explores the unsettled nature of life itself, of the changes and compromises, of the lies and concealments that we all are complicit in. Grant is excellent at portraying how small betrayals, not only between friends, lovers and family but also the betrayal of ideas from youth, can have far reaching consequences for the person you become. Evie herself, however, often feels like a distraction; it is Adele that the reader is most interested in and enthralled by. Her selfishness, her lies, her moral ambiguity and her ruthless storytelling are compelling right to the very last page. (Kylie Grant)