Author:Gordon Legge
NEAR NEIGHBOURS introduces an eccentric world very like our own, peopled by characters who live for football, music and sex but who are also monopedes, cross-gender doppelgangers, window-fetishists or sock-throwers. A master of broad farce and the paranoid monologue, Gordon Legge looks obliquely at life and returns it to us all with its grim hilarity, sadness and humanity restored. Gordon Legge's first collection of stories, IN BETWEEN TALKING ABOUT THE FOOTBALL, was hailed by the New York Times as a 'cult classic'. With this, his second, he joins the ranks of Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner and Duncan Mclean as one of the most exciting and original of the new Scots writers.
Aimee Bender’s debut short-story collection shows a writer ready to flirt with the fantastical. Largely concerned with the love lives of young metropolitans and desperate housewives, her cheerily bizarre scenarios give romance a fresh twist … Bender is a writer with a very incendiary turn of phrase.
—— IndependentThese stories are unusual, certainly and they take you inside people’s feelings. Bender gets you to see the world in very particular ways. Beautifully done; you won’t forget this.
—— Evening StandardHilarious, deep and a little bit dirty
—— Harper's BazaarMany of the stories in The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, begin with a premise just on the fringe of the familiar, then give it a tantalising twist ... Bender's stories are powered be voice - by pleasure of an electric simile and a restrained sauciness
—— New York Times Book ReviewFierce and true ... Fantastic!
—— Los Angeles Times Book ReviewMakes you grateful for the very existence of language
—— San Francisco ChronicleBender has hit the ground running with this debut
—— Entertainment WeeklyMagical … a collection of mesmerisingly imaginative tales
—— Bella MagazineColours and landscapes are evoked in language that, at once lush and direct, is in itself a pleasure and a reminder that Malouf is also a poet of considerable talent
—— Aamer Hussein , IndependentHis writing here has a fine descriptive delicacy and sensory exactness that act as guarantees of the stories' truth and the authenticity of the experiences they embody
—— Tom Deveson , Sunday TimesMalouf deals with both the vast and the seemingly unimportant... He does it with biting wit, elegance and a rare, uncluttered honesty
—— Chris Dolan , Saturday HeraldPoignant and wonderful story...concentrates, without effort, all Malouf's themes...it needs to be read
—— ProspectJulian Barnes reminds us what an exhilarating experience it can be to read a really good critic.
—— Jane Shilling , Sunday TelegraphA compulsive page-turner.
—— Tim Adams , ObserverBarnes’s passion for his writers is infectious.
—— Ion Trewin , Sunday ExpressBlissfully intelligent.
—— Roger Lewis , Financial TimesThe temptation to turn away is powerful, but the rewards for resisting it are considerable. These essays combine a scholarly breadth of knowledge with a powerful sense of the absurdities of the creative life.
—— Jane Shilling , Sunday TelegraphThrough the Window is a wonderful and very interesting collection of essays that rewards close, and also measured, reading.
—— Brendan Wright , Nudge