Reviews & features: Books, Issue 637

The Mulgray Twins

Gentle crime from unique pairing

If you’re walking around Charlotte Square Gardens and need a double take towards a pair of 70-year-old women who look almost exactly the same, strong chances are it’s Helen and Morna Mulgray. The former teachers who have never been married but have…

Top 5 authors with three names

For some writers, a middle initial just isn’t enough to get across their need for a slightly longer name than is the norm. Here’s a quintet of triple-monikered authors: George Dawes Green Two events from the tri-titled New York chap, firstly…

Kids Events at the Book Festival

The events and authors for the younger generation

Old favourites for kids include Michael Morpurgo (22 Aug), Malorie Blackman (22 Aug), Jacqueline Wilson (23 Aug), Anne Fine (23 Aug), Julia Donaldson (24 Aug), and Terry Deary of horrible history stardom (28 Aug), but there’s a whole lucky-dip of events…

Beatrice Colin: A History Maker

The author speaks of how contemporary Scotland influences her novels of Europe's past

Beatrice Colin’s entry in the Book Festival catalogue describes her as a ‘debut novelist’, which may confound anyone who’s encountered The Luminous Life of Lily Nelly Aphrodite. The Glasgow writer’s huge, beautiful 2008 novel takes in Berlin from…

5 Questions: Helen Fitzgerald

Give us five words to describe My Last Confession? Menacing, funny, fast, twisted, gripping. Which authors should be more famous than they are now? I love the multiple layers in Kate Atkinson’s stories and think she should be even more famous…

Courtyard Readings

Hey! Yeah, you there, with the furrowed brow, the fistful of flyers and the crazed, distracted look. Listen, put down the Fringe Guide – it’s okay, just for an hour – and tuck yourself away in the soothing environs of the Scottish Poetry Library’s…

Frank Skinner

He may now be in his 50s, but there’s no real sign of Frank Skinner slowing up. The cheeky Midlands chappie has delivered his memoir of life back on the stand-up circuit, On the Road, and in this List-sponsored event you can expect the honesty and…

Sharon Olds - American Literary Legend

It’s time to assess the sins of the father – and the mother. And there’s no one better to do so than one of America’s most influential poets, Sharon Olds, as famous for her tough stylistic swagger as her unflinching mind. Olds was born in 1942 and is…

James Lovelock - The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning

He has been likened to ‘an Old Testament prophet’ by John Carey, identified as the creator of an ‘evil religion’ by biologist John Maynard Smith, and labelled a writer of ‘pop-ecology literature’ by Richard Dawkins. James Lovelock, veteran scientist and…

John Aberdein - Strip the Willow

Think you can handle pressure? Try following an award-winning debut. John Aberdein kept a cool head when it came to writing Strip the Willow however, despite the huge anticipation for the novel as a result of excellent first offering Amande’s Bed. ‘Some…

Rebecca Gowers

‘How you write about a woman somewhere in her 20s without being labeled chick-lit, I don’t know,’ says Rebecca Gowers, frustrated by the fact that her novels are so often lumped into the genre of pastel-covered books all about modern ladies cooing over…

James Lasdun - The Art of the Short Story

Over the years James Lasdun has turned his pen to novels, screenplays, travel writing, journalism and poetry, but short stories are his current medium of choice, having recently published his third collection, It’s Beginning to Hurt. Lasdun suggests…