Books Events www.list.co.uk/books
suggested donation. Edinburgh’s monthly storytelling club welcomes all to listen or contribute to the spinning of yarns. A delightful evening of words and song.
performing, and the music comes from Feijoada. Monday 1
Sunday 31 Edinburgh FREE Book Group Waterstone’s, Cameron Toll Shopping Centre, 6 Lady Road, 666 1866. 5–6pm. A regular book group meeting on the last Sunday of every month. This month’s required reading is The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams. Contact the branch for more information. Shore Poets The Lot, 4–6 Grassmarket, 225 9922. 7.45pm. £4 (£3). Jen Hadfield is your headline act for the first Shore Poets of the New Year. Jim C Wilson and Lindsey Bone are also
Edinburgh FREE Blackwell Book Quiz Blackwell, 53–59 South Bridge, 622 8222. 6pm. Test your literary credentials in teams of up to five members.
Thursday 4
Edinburgh ✽✽ Ruth Thomas The Edinburgh Bookshop, 181 Bruntsfield Place,
229 9207. 7.30pm. £5 (redeemable against purchase). A reading from the author of novel Things to Make and Mend and short story collection Super Girl.
Events Events are listed by date, then city. Submit listings at least ten days before publication to suzanne.black@list.co.uk. Listings are compiled by Suzanne Black.
Monday 25 Edinburgh FREE Efraim Zuroff Blackwell, 53–59 South Bridge, 622 8206. 6.15pm. Operation Last Chance charts Zuroff’s thrilling, dangerous and difficult quest to track down the remaining Nazi criminals.
Friday 22 Wednesday 27
Glasgow ✽✽ Iain Anderson in Conversation: Norman MacLean and Mairi
MacInnes Royal Concert Hall: Exhibition Hall, 2 Sauchiehall Street, 353 8000. 12.30pm. £3.50. Norman MacLean, musician, actor, comedian and all-round Gaelic entertainer talks with Mairi MacInnes and Iain Anderson about his autobiography, The Leper’s Bell. Part of Celtic Connections.
Edinburgh FREE Jasper Fforde Waterstone’s, 83 George Street, 225 3436. 1pm. Jasper Fforde pops in store to sign Shades of Grey, his latest mind-bending and imagination-stretching novel, which is set in a world of altered colour perception.
✽✽ Getting Under Their Skins: Sarah Dunant National Gallery of Scotland: Hawthornden Lecture Theatre, The Mound, 624 6200. 6–7pm. £6 (£5). Sarah Dunant, author of international bestseller The Birth of Venus, discusses how novelists and portraitists work together to create characters, with reference to the BP Portrait Award. Matthew Reilly Waterstone’s, 128 Princes Street, 226 2666. 6pm. £2 (redeemable against purchase). Aussie author Reilly continues the adventures of his hero Jack West in The Five Greatest Warriors, the third in his fantasy series after Seven Ancient Wonders and The Six Sacred Stones.
Glasgow FREE Don’t Eat the Mic Tchai Ovna, 42 Otago Lane, 357 4524. 8pm. An evening of poetry performance in association with ToadinMud.co.uk. Edinburgh Poetry Surgeries Scottish Poetry Library, 5 Crichton’s Close, Canongate, 557 2876. Noon. £35 (£25). Kona Macphee tries to make the creative process as painless as possible. Contact Paul McGrane to book a slot on 020 7420 9881.
Thursday 28
Edinburgh ✽✽ FREE StAnza 2010 Poetry Festival Programme Launch
National Library of Scotland, George IV Bridge, 623 3918. 6pm. Poet Kei Miller launches the programme for the 2010 poetry festival that takes place in St Andrews. FREE Eurig Scandrett Word Power Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, 662 9112. 7pm. Eurig Scandrett launches Bhopal Survivors Speak: Emergent Voices From a People’s Movement.
Friday 29 Edinburgh Guid Crack Club Waverly Bar, St Mary’s Street, 556 9579. 7.30pm. £3
RURAL TALE WILLY VLAUTIN Lean on Pete (Faber) ●●●●●
To date, Willy Vlautin has written about ordinary American drifters careering from one dead end job to another on lonely roads, escaping something dark from their past and desperately seeking hope in an uncertain future. Lean On Pete offers no respite from that often starkly miserable world which has its roots in the über-realist writings of John Steinbeck and William Kennedy. It’s with some certainty you will conclude that Vlautin, lead guy with alt-country band Richmond Fontaine, isn’t likely any day now to pen a sci-fi fantasy novel or ghostwrite a footballer’s wife’s memoir. Niche found, he seems happy enough to knock out such fare for years to come. Charley Thompson is a 15-year-old who desires nothing more than a
stable home to live in and a decent school to attend. Having no real memory of his mother, he is saddled with a father, Ray, a restless soul with little intention of settling into anything other than a life of wandering and the dangers inherent in such an existence. With Ray largely absent, Charley gets himself a job at the local racetrack, looking after jaded horses such as the titular Lean on Pete, handed infrequent paychecks by the permanently ill-tempered and possibly perverted boss Del. When incidents at home and work leave Charley exposed and frightened, he sets off on a hazardous road trip towards a potentially more secure life.
Told directly through the eyes of a fairly ordinary 15-year-old boy, Vlautin’s writing is flatter and more pared-down than before and over the course of 270 pages, gets fairly wearing. But he portrays this perilous world with guile and weaves memorable characters into each pit stop Charley takes. And for anyone with a sentimental attachment to beasts of an equine nature, a river of tears awaits. (Brian Donaldson)
StAnza 2010 Poetry Festival Programme Launch Ahead of the five-day event in March, StAnza’s poet-in-residence Kei Miller (pictured) hosts the launch of the 2010 St Andrews programme. Among those appearing this year are Seamus Heaney, John Burnside, Jen Hadfield, Ben Okri and Linton Kwesi Johnson, alongside various tours, cabarets and open mic events. ■ National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, Thu 28 Jan.
36 THE LIST 21 Jan–4 Feb 2010