Ahead of her appearance at
Glasgow’s Aye Write! literary festival, crime fiction master Louise Welsh tells Claire
Sawers about the dark side of the English Lit department in her
latest novel
DEAD POETS SOCIETY
‘T he funny thing is, often when you’re at home you’re thinking about being away. Anywhere, just away. It’s like, “How can I get out of this hellhole?”’ Louise Welsh takes a sip of herbal tea before she carries on.
‘Then you go away, and suddenly you’re thinking about home. I started writing this novel when I was in Berlin. It was born out of a little bit of homesickness. That irritates me so much!’ Welsh stops to laugh at herself, hands raised in the air in mock annoyance. ‘What’s the point of that? You’re somewhere beautiful and you’re thinking I wish I could go down to the pub!’ And so, Welsh’s trip to Germany inspired a novel set back home in her beloved Scotland. But it’s not the cliché-riddled reverie of an expat, looking back through tartan-tinted glasses. Her latest novel, Naming the Bones meanders between divey Edinburgh boozers and muddy Highland burial grounds, via the odd dogging episode in a carpark, or drunken punch-up in the street.
‘I think actually most Scottish readers would be irritated if they saw Scotland evoked as this heather-covered glen,’ explains the Glasgow- based author. She is in reflective mood after spending a morning in Polmont Young Offenders Institution trying to encourage some of the inmates into creative writing.
‘Most Scottish people see their country pretty clearly. That’s part of the attraction – it’s not always an easy place to live: the weather’s bad; there’s lots of things we’d love to change. But it’s also a great place, and I’ll die here.’ Welsh’s 2002 debut, The Cutting Room, was set in a grim and foreboding Glasgow. A literary thriller, it dealt, among other things, with snuff porn. Hailed as a modern gothic classic, the novel won several awards and set the tone for Welsh’s storytelling – dark, atmospheric, often very funny, and generally laced with danger. After a detour to Berlin for
26 THE LIST 4–18 Mar 2010
novel number two, The Bullet Trick, set among the seedy glamour of the city’s underground burlesque scene, her focus returns to Scotland. Welsh paints her charismatic tale of black magic onto a wallpaper of academia, setting it within library reading rooms and the corridors of Glasgow University’s English Literature department. In it, Murray Watson is researching the life of a dead poet, Archie Lunan, who died mysteriously at 25. Watson is desperate to bring the overlooked writer back to the public’s attention, and his research draws him into the murky world of suicidology and the occult.
‘I liked the idea of academia, and how it differs from the world of the artist,’ explains Welsh. ‘I enjoy that particularity of vision that people have to have. You get something akin to an obsession; people who know an awful lot, about a tiny subject. I really admire that.’
Unfolding like a sophisticated whodunit, full of her trademark dour wit, Welsh peels back the rarefied veneers of academic life to expose something rotten beneath. ‘I just have this thing, when someone tells you they’re respectable, you mistrust that,’ she says with a twinkling eye. Although the ‘fur coat and nae knickers’ theme often crops up in Scottish literature, Welsh doesn’t believe it’s a uniquely Scottish phenomenon. She believes Scots, like everyone else, have their flaws.
‘Of course, I quite like a bit of repression,’ she adds with a fast chuckle. ‘I think people could be too open. I don’t like people kissing in the street. In fact, I’d quite like them to bring back those “No Petting” signs they used to have in swimming pools.’
Naming the Bones is out now, published by Canongate. Louise Welsh is appearing at the Mitchell Library, Glasgow on Wed 10 Mar to launch her new novel, as part of Aye Write! She’ll also be talking about ‘the Gorbals Vampire’, on BBC Radio 4, 11pm Tue 30 Mar.
AYE WRITERS Choice picks from the Glasgow book festival
Alain de Botton The terribly clever philosopher and author wonders just what our obsession with work is all about. Fri 5 Mar, 6pm. partner relays the story of the musician’s remarkable recovery after two devastating brain haemorrhages. Wed 10 Mar, 7.30pm.
Janet Paisley and Manda Scott Historical fiction is the chosen bag of these two writers with the iconic figure of Boudica connecting them. Sat 6 Mar, 3.30pm.
Willy Maley on Irvine Welsh Having already written Muriel Spark for Starters, the academic, commentator and playwright offers his own take on the Leith legend. Sun 7 Mar, 2pm. Amy Bloom and Janice Galloway In a golden age of short story writing these two scribes will be chatting about the form and reading from their works. Tue 9 Mar, 6pm.
Edwyn Collins and Grace Maxwell In Grace Maxwell’s Falling and Laughing Edwyn Collins’ business and life
AL Kennedy Besides her shiny new career in stand-up, ALK is still an author of rare gravity. Here, she discusses her recent collection of short stories. Thu 11 Mar, 6pm. Denise Mina and Bryan Talbot Mina has added to her palette with a Glasgow-set Hellblazer tale while Talbot has furthered his canon with Grandville, a detective story set in France. Fri 12 Mar, 7.30pm.
Don Paterson and Robin Robertson Dundee Don is one of Scotland’s most consistent poetic talents while RR’s new collection, The Wrecking Light was recently described by us as ‘startling in its honesty and unremittingly bleak’. Sat 13 Mar, 3.30pm. (Brian Donaldson) ■ All events at Mitchell Theatre, £7 (£6).
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