{BOOKS} Previews Top 5
LITTLE TREATS
Brian Donaldson picks five kids authors to see before Charlotte Square Gardens closes its doors and shuts up shop for yet another year Debi Gliori The Glasgow-raised illustrator and writer will be chatting about her work and offering a sneak preview of her upcoming book, The Scariest Thing of All, about a poor rabbit that seems terrified of everything. Don’t worry, it has a happy ending. 25 Aug, 10am, £4.50.
Chris Priestley For the over- 10s, this event is concerned with his Tales of Terror books which have featured adventures with Uncle Montague, from the tunnel’s mouth, and on a black ship. 25 Aug, 6pm, £4.50.
Carol Ann Duffy Alongside her musical sidekick John Sampson, the Poet Laureate looks at a young girl in The Gift, following the cycle of life by exploring themes of birth, death, love and the crucial importance of family and friends. All the while it tackles and unravels the mysteries which lie deep in the thumping heart of human experience. 26 Aug, 3.30pm, £4.50. Charlie Higson One of the key men in The Fast Show, Higson has gone and reinvented himself as a massively successful children’s writer. Having penned the highly popular Young Bond series, he’s now turned back to the world of zombie horror. But do his living dead folks run fast or lumber along with their arms outstretched? 27 Aug, 1.30pm, £4.50.
Eoin Colfer The Artemis Fowl books have only gone and sold over 18m copies, so it might be an idea to pop along to try and find out the secret of Colfer’s success. Artemis was recently named in Forbes Magazine’s top 20 rich list of fictional characters. Odd thing to spend your spare time working out. 28 Aug, 1.30pm, £4.50.
24 THE LIST 25 Aug–22 Sep 2011
L A V I T S E F
JAMES YORKSTON A droll and heartfelt memoir from the Fife bard
Earlier this year, James Yorkston seduced a full-house in Glasgow, clad with a well-thumbed touring diary. It was not the first time, and it won’t be the last. While the Fife-based singer-songwriter and commended Fence Collective affiliate has long been loved for his blustering folk psalms and undulating, picturesque shanties, his publishing debut, It’s Lovely to Be Here, has proven that Yorkston is a sickening man: for not only is he a charmer and a bard, he’s an exquisite prose writer to boot.
‘It was interesting going back into the thick soup that is my memory and recalling all these characters I’d met,’ says our warm-hearted renaissance chap of his accidental tome. ‘I was asked to write a piece for Loops,’ he explains of the Faber and Domino cult-pop journal, so I put together a short tour diary, and I
enjoyed the writing, so I just kept on going. Once I’d written a few sections I sent them off to the guy at Faber and he wrote backing saying it was braw as a craw and encouraging me to continue and to make a book out of it.’ This is a thoroughly Yorkston narrative. Lest we
forget, he assailed our hearts after John Peel played (and raved about) his demos and Domino came knocking at his door. Now the same record label (home to the Arctic Monkeys and Fence ally King Creosote) has set up a publishing house in his honour. Amid his globe-trotting tales of peeping toms and
geese masquerading as bomb scares, Yorkston’s volume recalls the fateful day he posted Peel his demo. ‘The post office wifey scans over [Peel’s] name and gives me a quick look that says: he’ll never play this.’ Like Yorkston’s songs, It’s Lovely to Be Here is modest, droll and heart-breaking. (Nicola Meighan) ■ 27 Aug (with Ian Rankin), 4pm, £10 (£8).
REBECCA HUNT Creating a credible and empathetic vision of illness affecting the famous and the not-so
One of the most intriguing and delectably-crafted debut novels of the past year was Mr Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt. The black dog of Winston Churchill’s legendary deep depression is brought vividly to life through the eponymous mutt (also known as Black Pat) who pays regular visits to the two key (human) characters in the book, the wartime leader himself as he swithers on the verge of quitting the political scene, and Esther, a library clerk at the House of Commons who is shocked to receive a visit from Black Pat.
The besuited canine was often spoken of by her
depressed husband who ultimately committed suicide. Does this mean that the lonely widow is now in the clutches of a miserable cloud that is easy to be engulfed by but very difficult to escape from? ‘I’ve had darker moments and know people who’ve
had it rough but I don’t think I’ve been truly depressed,’ says Hunt. ‘I did read up about it, but I used information that I’ve learned through my own experiences and expanded it to for the writing. You use empathy and imagination to try and create and develop the experience in a way that you hope is credible.’ (Brian Donaldson) ■ 29 Aug (with Cornelius Medvei), 3.30pm, £7 (£5).