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Best Scottish Books of 2014

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Best Scottish Books of 2014 ISSN 1754-1514 The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber Hogarth, 2014 —chosen by Stuart Kelly, freelance critic and The writer James Robertson’s experimental collection 365 – 365 stories of 365 words each, from January Bottle 1 to December 31 – is a joy of possibilities. Fable, satire, epiphany, folk-tale, meditation and denunciation are all encompassed in these Imp restricted little wonders. Ali Smith’s How To Be Both is a study in how not to be both – two novellas spliced together, half the copies of Issue 16, November 2014 which begin with the contemporary and move Best Scottish Books of 2014 on to the Renaissance, and half vice versa (or should that be vice verso?) – meaning the as 2014 a good year for Scottish writ- reader is left both choosing and choiceless. ing? And – more importantly – have Michel Faber’s The Book Of Strange New Things Wyou missed anything? There’s still is an absolute wonder, featuring Earth’s first time to catch up! ASLS has asked seventeen Christian missionary to an alien planet, whose authors, critics, academics, and members of wife sends increasingly worrying interstellar the literary sector to tell us about their favour- emails about how alien the Earth is becoming. ite Scottish book from this past year. The book It’s plangent, beautiful, sincere and strange. could be in English, Scots, or Gaelic, it could be published for the first time in 2014 or re- Byssus by Jen Hadfield issued this year, and could be a work of fiction, Picador, 2014 poetry, or academic research. And what a —chosen by David Borthwick, Lecturer in wonderful list it is. We’ve got some well-kent Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of faces here and exciting new ones, and it all Glasgow shows the variation and vibrance of Scotland’s Jen Hadfield’s Byssus – named for the tough writing culture. There is something for every- fibred ‘beard’ of the mussel, which anchors one, so get comfy, and have a browse through it to the seabed – is her third collection. Jen the Best Scottish Books from 2014. The list is Hadfield is surely one of Scotland’s most origi- organised by title. If your favourite isn’t here, nal contemporary poets, unafraid to be playful, let us know about it! the detail of her fine observations of places What was your favourite book of 2014? and creatures so often humorous and illumi- nating at the same time. The cockle’s ‘smile’ is The Bees by Carol Ann Duffy ‘a stuck-in-the-mud smile’, a ‘spit-in-your-eye Faber & Faber US, 2014 (2013) smile.’ Jen Hadfield’s accuracy of image is often —chosen by Evan Gottlieb, Associate Professor astonishing. A group of adolescents use mobile of English, Oregon State University phones in the dark and we’re told: ‘they’ve The first new collection of poems by Duffy cracked open / their phones like geodes.’ Like after becoming Poet Laureate of Britain is Hadfield’s previous collections, belonging and now available in paperback. And what better home are vital here: ‘this place / these folk way to move forward after the Referendum, // what was on your doorstep / all along’. no matter one’s feelings in its aftermath, than Nevertheless, the people and landscapes of by reading it (again)? Like her titular sub- Shetland are brought out in vivid lyrics that jects – who buzz around and through many of show them anew, illuminated and vivid. this volume’s verses – Duffy is equal measure sweetness and business. Whether extending Doubling Back by Linda Cracknell the Romantics’ tradition of meditations on the Freight Books, 2014 human-environment continuum, or focusing —chosen by Gillian Beattie-Smith, lecturer and on urban phenomena like charity shops, her researcher at The Open University, and man- love of language and depth of feeling encour- ager of online Scottish Women Writers age us to enjoy every word, line, and stanza. My research is concerned with women’s travel writing, so perhaps I would have been naturally drawn to Doubling Back, but actually, I just www.thebottleimp.org.uk The Bottle Imp is the ezine of the Scottish Writing Exhibition www.scottishwriting.org.uk and is published by the Association for Scottish Literary Studies www.asls.org.uk 1 like Linda Cracknell’s writing. Her 2014 book is revealed through the filter of dementia, is is New Nature Writing which has been defined incredibly well written and hugely moving. as experimental in its forms. Cracknell’s book experimentally combines essay, reflection, Gone Are the Leaves by Anne Donovan travelogue and memoir. She walks in her own Canongate Books, 2014 childhood as well as in the footsteps of others, —chosen by Linden Bicket, who teaches in where she makes ‘peace with the contradic- Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow, tory impulses of familiarity and ‘otherness’‘ and in Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. and confronts the unreliability of memory. She is also co-director of Scottish Universities’ That gothic internal strangeness in her writing International Summer School has struck me in much of her work and has at Anne Donovan’s medieval romance, Gone are times unsettled my students. And yet, there is the Leaves, might at first seem a world away a wonderful humour in her reflections; it is the from the world of Buddha Da (2003), in which honest, personal integrity in her writing that I a Glaswegian painter and decorator develops find engaging, and the unfamiliar treatment of an interest in Buddhism. But though Gone are the familiar which is haunting. I am delighted the Leaves is set in the sixteenth century, there that Doubling Back has been declared an out- is much to unite these two novels. In this new standing success in New Nature Writing by such tale, Donovan again explores faithfulness. Her weighties in the genre as Robert Macfarlane. I narrator, Deirdre, the young apprentice to her fully agree. seamstress mother, is a clear-sighted, imagi- native and tender little artist, who falls in love From the Line: Scottish War Poetry with Feilamort – an orphaned choirboy with 1914–1945 edited by David Goldie an angelic voice. Deirdre is absorbed by the and Roderick Watson beauty of creation, and her luminous observa- ASLS, 2014 tions of the sacramental universe are woven —chosen by Lesley Duncan, journalist, poetry like a trail of silver thread throughout: ‘Autumn editor for The Herald, and poet is the season of death yet tae me it is mair From the Line: Scottish War Poetry 1914–1945 alive than any. Leaf fall, tomber, is death, but could not be more timely. Editors David Goldie whit a bleeze of glory precedes it: brichtness and Roderick Watson have drawn on the work like a pain through the heart.’ Donovan’s love of more than fifty writers. Familiar pieces from of and feel for the cadences of Middle Scots is the First World War include Charles Hamilton keenly felt in this text, which by the end is an Sorley’s nihilistic sonnet ‘When you see mil- absorbing, lyrical fairy tale. lions of the mouthless dead’ and Neil Munro’s darkly ironic ‘Hey, Jock, are ye glad ye ’listed?’ How to Be Both by Ali Smith The Second World War highlights range from Hamish Hamilton, 2014 the intellectual gunnery of Hamish Henderson’s —chosen by Alistair Braidwood, who runs the ‘Elegies for the Dead in Cyrenaica’ to Alexander website Scots Whay Hae! and is Senior Editor Scott’s paean to ordinary ‘Sodgers’. Less famil- at Cargo Publishing iar material adds to the cumulative power of My book of the year has to be Ali Smith’s How this testament to bravery and resilience in the to Be Both. In 2012 Smith published a collec- most extreme situations. tion of essays called Artful, and that’s exactly what this novel is. Smith takes the idea that Ghost Moon by Ron Butlin there are two sides to every story and explores Salt Publishing, 2014 it in the most wonderfully life-affirming and —chosen by Sarah Morrison, Communications unexpected manner. She touches upon favour- Executive for Edinburgh UNESCO City of ite themes of art, sexuality, death and religion, Literature Trust and plays with them in a manner which is vivid, When he’s not writing wonderful poetry, former vibrant and complex, with a style so elegant it Edinburgh Makar Ron Butlin is writing amazing takes the breath away. Ali Smith reminds us of novels and Ghost Moon is no exception. It’s what fiction can do at its very best. probably one of the most uncomfortable books I’ve ever read, but that is testament to the truth of his writing and the raw emotion of the story. The complexity and difficulty of Tom’s adult relation with his mother, as the story of her life as an unmarried mother in the 1950s www.thebottleimp.org.uk The Bottle Imp is the ezine of the Scottish Writing Exhibition www.scottishwriting.org.uk and is published by the Association for Scottish Literary Studies www.asls.org.uk 2 How to Be Both by Ali Smith sure the combination of ingredients will result Hamish Hamilton, 2014 in an unexpected and unforgettable blend —chosen by Carla Sassi, Professor of Foreign of flavours. With Prince Otto, the novel first Languages and Literature at the University of published on 1 November 1885, and which Verona has recently appeared in the New Edinburgh Which copy of the novel will you pick up and Edition of Stevenson’s Complete Works, the read? One that opens in Renaissance Ferrara impression of being in a folk tale with a twist is and recounts the imaginary life of painter already in the title of the first chapter ‘In which Francesco del Cossa? Or one where the story the prince departs on an adventure’ – a prince of a contemporary teenage girl – George – and an adventure are almost inseparable, but struggling to make sense of the world after her ‘the’ prince? We are assumed to know Prince mother’s death comes first? Arguably, order Otto already, but where are we? And though is an accident in this visual-lyrical two-part the setting sounds like that of an operetta by novel.
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