Contemporary
Glasgow
The Architecture of the 1990’s
Local author Johnny Rodger will be celebrating the launch of this guide to Glasgow’s newest architec- ture. on THURSDAY 25TH MARCH AT 8PM at
BORDERS”
books-music-videoocafi
98 BUCHANAN STREET, GLASGOW G1 3BA 0141 222 7700
Iain Banks
will be talking about his favourite music chosen for the Songbook CD, followed by a signing Personal Effects,
on FRIDAY 26TH MARCH at 7PM
at
BORDERS”
books-music-video-cafl
98 BUCHANAN STREET, GLAsoow Gl 3BA 0141 222 7700
94 THE "ST 18 Mar—I Apr 1999
books
new titles FOOTBALL PHOTOGRAPHY
Posts i Neville Gable (Penguin £9.99) *‘k‘k‘k
’The goal shall consist of two upright
posts, eight yards apart (inside measurement), joined by a horizontal crossbar the lower edge of which shall be eight feet from the ground.’ As Neville Gabie’s book of photographs
proves, this FIFA ruling has not stopped people around the globe from creating
something very different to enjoy a kickabout.
From the roughest housing estates in Buenos Aires, Belfast and Birkenhead to the rural glories of Cornwall, Callanais and Cruzeiro, South African- born Gabie has caught more than just images of recreation. We see where Pele, George Best and Maradona first booted leather beside the thoughts of explorer David Livingstone, existentialist Jean Baudrillard and ex-
Man U icon Eric Cantona.
Under water, on the beach, in the
jungle — nowhere is safe from those ' seeking a venue to pitch their posts or
a wall to chalk their goals. This is a
3 visually exquisite and oddly moving testament to the beautiful game. (BD)
I CONTEMPORARY FICTION
One People
5 Guy Kennaway (Payback Press £6.99)
* ** ‘k In the sleepy, fictional town of Angel
Beach, Kennaway has created a mirror for the whole of Jamaica. Here is a slice
of paradise, ignored by the rich and
powerful and by the tourists in their buses on the way to the airport, and
a left to rot in its own poverty. Yet here, ; the simple can become fine and a promise is, in itself, to be treasured, as wonderful as that which is promised.
And in the inhabitants of the Beach, Kennaway has created some gentle
and human characters who, although
starting out as cartoons, grow in characterisation from one hilarious yarn to the next — as does the
character of Jamaica itself. Such a book, with its reliance on the Jamaican a language, could so easily have become
trite and condescending. But in
Kennaway’s gently laughing manner, it
is as warm and welcoming as the people of which he writes. (TD)
GAY THRILLER
- Crossing Jordan
Jack Dickson (Millivres £8.50) at t at In Glasgow’s urban wastelands, two
fifteen-year-old boys struggle with their sexuality, the shady world of deals and drugs, and with each other. Danny
.1 is the middle-class son of a policeman and a primary school teacher — he’s up
for five Highers and Edinburgh
University. Kel stays alone with his
I father, hangs outwith the school
bullies and runs errands for Jordan, a
dodgy, big-time criminal.
Told in a breath-tightenineg rapid-fire style — all three—word lines and staccato
sentences— Dickson gets right inside
Danny’s confusion. it’s not that he's confused about being gay, but by the way he can interact With the world in general and Kel in partiCUlar.
The dialogue, particularly Kel’s, is sharply observed and accurately voiced and the pace of the action is satisfactOry, keeping y0u wanting to know what will happen. But it is the sex, told elliptically enough to keep the eroticism high, which keeps this throbbing along. (TD)
SHORT STORY COLLECTION The World's Smallest, Unicorn And Other
Stories Shena Mackay (Cape £12.99) * 4r
l‘ir.‘ \Vrjit'ltlti STT‘JIICNT lattice)?”
.zml ("in ‘Twit.‘~
i
8 ll 1: NA M AC. k m .
Shena Mackay’s latest short story collection produces an overbearing feeling of lightness. The pace at which these stories whip along and their pithy unveiling of the sinister hidden worlds which lurk behind the public facade makes for a relaxed and uncomplicated read.
The ten tales here, however, also suffer from lack of depth which means that the writing occasionally rings false. Strangely for a writer so obsessed With surfaces, Mackay’s pieces can have the tell-tale signs of ’short story-Iite’ all over them. The effect creates an overall atmosphere of triteness, through lack of resolution or emphatic action in the characters’ lives.
Think of this book as a collection of communion wafers: delicate and easily digestible but also overtly symbolic, their substance sacrificed by the wider context in which they are consumed. There are some flashes of excellence - the unrequned love of ’Trouser Ladies’, for instance -- but not enough to
- rescue it from mediocrity. (C D)
COUNTRY NOIR Tomato Red
Daniel Woodrell (No Exit £10)
****
There are only two things to do when life sets you down on the wrong side of the tracks deep in the heart of the