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BOOKS | Reviews
DARK COMEDY IRVINE WELSH The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins (Jonathan Cape) ●●●●●
For his ninth novel, Irvine Welsh has swapped grey and gritty Scotland for blue Floridian skies, but not even the Miami sunshine can diminish his darkly twisted view of the world. The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins tells the story of personal trainer Lucy Brennan and artist Lena Sorensen. They meet after Lena’s mobile phone footage of Lucy disarming a gunman in pursuit of two homeless men turns the fitness fanatic into an overnight media
star, someone to ‘shake America out of its complacency’. This grand scenario sets up what is essentially an examination of an age where privacy is nearly impossible, and image is everything. Lucy is soon hired by the obese and obsessive Lena, leading
to vast amounts of exercise, lies, food and betrayal. The intricate plot develops through a split narrative dominated by the foul-mouthed and increasingly psychopathic Lucy, whose voice is used to throw some savage punches at modern America, though the Chicago-based Welsh’s underlying love of his adopted homeland is apparent.
Many of the hallmarks that have established Welsh as one of Scotland’s literary heroes are present, from razor-sharp prose to experimentations with form, an outrageous level of expletives and sado-masochistic sex scenes. The superficial Miami setting is a perfect part of the world for Lucy and Lena’s shared psychosis to thrive, which it does with murderous effect. Female narrators authored by men can often fall into clichéd traps but, after a somewhat sluggish start, both Lucy and Lena dazzle in this hugely entertaining read. (Kevin Scott)
CONSPIRACY THRILLER NED BEAUMAN Glow (Sceptre) ●●●●●
POLITICAL NOVEL LIAM MURRAY BELL The Busker (Myriad) ●●●●●
URBAN REALISM EMMA JANE UNSWORTH Animals (Canongate) ●●●●● POETRY NIALL CAMPBELL Moontide (Bloodaxe) ●●●●●
Beauman’s third novel begins with a rave in a launderette where Raf is introduced to a new drug called Glow. Everyone wants Glow, including Cherish, a beautiful Burmese woman who Raf all too briefly meets. The next day Raf discovers that his best friend Theo is missing and strange men have appeared in the neighbourhood. As he investigates Theo’s disappearance, and attempts to locate Cherish, he unwittingly plunges himself into the very heart of a global conspiracy. Glow is a thoroughly enjoyable, playful read. There are silent white vans stalking South London streets, suspicious foxes, money laundering, sex and drugs. The narrative hooks immediately, as does the language, which is often delightfully inventive. There are also surprisingly tender scenes that add depth and humour. If there’s a flaw, it’s in Glow's self- awareness. At times, Beauman’s desire to showcase his literary ambitions means the plot feels a little stretched and sentences can become too dense. Despite this, Beauman has created a truly modern thriller that is as addictive as it is inventive. (Kylie Grant)
42 THE LIST 17 Apr–15 May 2014
The Busker follows singer-songwriter Rab Dillon from his origins in Glasgow, through his attempts to crack the music industry in London to eventual homelessness in Brighton. This isn’t a spoiler: we first meet Rab on the streets, scrounging for food and drugs, busking for change. In Emma Jane Unsworth’s gloriously debauched and wonderfully touching second novel, semi-reformed party girl Laura is torn between a bacchanalian existence with Holly Golightly-on- speed best friend Tyler and her upcoming marriage to boringly stable musician Jim.
Bell’s decision to dispense with He wants her to give up the booze,
suspense is a bold one; by making plot of secondary importance, the likes of characterisation, setting and narrative voice come to the fore. In these first two categories, Bell excels: Rab’s acquaintances are believable and well-rounded, while the settings – from the grubby woodlands of Hyndland to the insidious coldness of Brighton’s beachfront – are very well observed. Unfortunately, Bell hits a bum note with Rab; naïve and egotistical, he’s an unsympathetic protagonist, and the author’s own clear love of language – the text abounds with metaphors and alliteration – often sits at odds with his inarticulate narrator. The Busker delivers a solid performance overall, but you may think twice before throwing your change in his hat. (Niki Boyle)
Tyler wants her to share the enormous jar of MDMA she’s stolen from a drug dealer and Laura just wants to be left in peace to finish the novel she’s been struggling with for years. Novels about drunken exploits are rarely as entertaining as they think they are – much like the friend at a party who’s had one too many, they mistake indulgence for profundity and think paragraphs humblebragging about their drug and alcohol consumption make them edgy – but Animals is a welcome exception to the rule.
While Unsworth treads a familiar path, she makes it her own with deft, self-skewering prose, evoking Gwendoline Riley rather than Lena Dunham. A gripping, raucous read from one of Britain’s most promising young writers. (Kaite Welsh)
On a first read, Niall Campbell’s debut collection might seem a simple enough affair of poems about the earthy, unassuming artefacts of life on the Western Isles. But Moontide is at its best when these details have their metaphorical strength deflated and made more complex and convincing by the poet’s deft, unobtrusive sense of irony.
In ‘The Work’, Campbell makes hay out of simplistic critical presentation: ‘If I have to, then let me be the whaler poet’. For the beautifully mock-heroic ‘Le Penseur’, he wonders precisely ‘what it is I do understand’. The book is full of these watchful asides, and its sustained tonal intimacy is one of its finest features.
Moontide’s sea is an uncanny and
threatening presence, embodying the recurring binaries of light / dark, song / silence, life / death. While some pieces wear their debt to poets like Don Paterson a little heavily, others are as deeply unsettling as they are richly imagined. Moontide’s facility with the lyric voice is rare in a first collection; its assurance to fruitfully undercut that voice even more so. (Dave Coates)