New Welsh Review 135 (summer 2024)

New Welsh Review 135 (summer 2024) PDF

Author: Satterday Shaw

Publisher: Parthian Books

Published: 2024-06-01

Total Pages: 115

ISBN-13: 1913830276

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Bringing together the best of Wales' review-essays, including a comparison of new editions of nature classics, 'Back to the Land' by Pippa Marland. The books under review, Thomas Firbank's I Bought a Mountain and Margiad Evans' Autobiography take contrasting blustering and humble approaches to stepping over the sub/urban doorstep into nature. A showcase of new nonfiction, previewing forthcoming titles from some of Wales' key English-language publishers, exploring books on anti-Welsh media vitriol covering the early Manic Street Preachers, and historical flooding and the riches of an Eton-owned Benedictine fishery on the Gwent Levels. In original fiction: a wonderful story about a teenage boy on the cusp of bodily and emotional change, 'Trout', by Satterday Shaw, and a second, finely crafted story about the effect of geographical dislocation on teenage identity emergence, 'Another Place' by Philippa Holloway, set on Crosby beach. Plus Editorial by Gwen Davies and a new opinion feature, Last Page, by Richard Lewis Davies, in which the writers note that magazines in Wales are undergoing a transition, during which readers and subscribers will need to step up to the plate if a commitment to expressing – without interference - our particular place and time, is to be maintained. EDITORIAL Half-in, half-out Gwen Davies NONFICTION Bears at the Fridge: From Goldcliff to Whitson Preview extract from This Stolen Land by Marsha O'Mahony The Kinnock Factor: The Manics and Anti-Welshness Edited abridged preview from International Velvet by Neil Collins FICTION Another Place Story by Philippa Holloway Trout Story by Satterday Shaw ESSAYS Dark Formula Timothy Laurence Marsh on why reckless travel writing matters Books for Alien Girls JL George's personal and practical reflections on the role neurodivergence can and should play when writing fiction REVIEW-ESSAYS Back to the Land Pippa Marland on two nature memoir classics, one of hubristic bluster, the other humbly receptive 'Queer Old Codgers' Claire Pickard on the portrayal of highly nuanced gay identities and history in recent nonfiction titles and a major short story anthology THE LAST PAGE Back to the Future Richard Lewis Davies on how a culture with ambition needs critics and readers

A Decent Ride

A Decent Ride PDF

Author: Irvine Welsh

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2016-02-02

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0385540906

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Irvine Welsh returns to Edinburgh, the home of Trainspotting and so many of his novels since, with a new novel featuring one of his most iconic and beloved characters—'Juice' Terry Lawson—that's thick on the Scottish brogue, heavy on the filth and masterful in its comedic timing. A Decent Ride sees Irvine Welsh back in Edinburgh, this time with one of his most compelling and popular characters front and center: the rampaging force of nature that is 'Juice' Terry Lawson, first seen in Glue. Juice is a man who contains multitudes: he's a top shagger, drug-dealing, gonzo pornstar and taxi driver. As we ride along in Juice's cab through the depraved streets of Edinburgh, Juice encounters a series of charmingly filthy characters, each of whom present their own, uh, unique challenges. Has he finally met his match in Hurricane 'Bawbag'? Can he discover the fate of the missing beauty, Jinty Magdalen, and keep her idiot-savant lover, the man-child Wee Jonty, out of prison? Will he find out the real motives of unscrupulous American businessman and reality-TV star, Ronald Checker? And, crucially, will Juice be able to negotiate life after a terrible event robs him of his sexual virility, and can a new fascination for the game of golf help him to live without . . . a decent ride? (The meaning of the title is starting to sink in now, huh?). So buckle your seatbelts and prepare for one unforgettable ride.

Skagboys

Skagboys PDF

Author: Irvine Welsh

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2012-09-17

Total Pages: 543

ISBN-13: 0393088731

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Chronicles the misadventures of Mark Renton and his friends as they cope with economic uncertainties, family problems, drug use, and the opposite sex in 1980s Edinburgh.

The Half-life of Snails

The Half-life of Snails PDF

Author: Philippa Holloway

Publisher: Parthian Books

Published: 2022-05-04

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 1913640582

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'a novel that shimmers with compassion... the author has crafted a tale that will linger longer than the half-life of many other books you will read this year.' – Alex Lockwood, author of The Chernobyl Privileges 'A careful, tender and arresting story that explores how we're formed by the places we think we own – I was moved by this suspenseful and delicate novel.' – Jenn Ashworth, author of Ghosted Two sisters, two nuclear power stations, one child caught in the middle... When Helen, a self-taught prepper and single mother, leaves her young son Jack with her sister for a few days so she can visit Chernobyl's Exclusion Zone, they both know the situation will be tense. Helen opposes plans for a new power station on the coast of Anglesey that will take over the family's farmland, and Jennifer works for the nuclear industry and welcomes the plans for the good of the economy. But blood is thicker than heavy water, and both want to reconnect somehow, with Jack perhaps the key to a new understanding of one another. Yet while Helen is forced to face up to childhood traumas, and her worst fears regarding nuclear disaster, during a trip that sees her caught up in political violence and trapped in Chernobyl's Exclusion Zone during the 2014 Euromaidan revolution, Jennifer too must discover that even the smallest decision can have catastrophic and long-lasting effects, both within the nuclear industry, and within the home. And Jack isn't like other five-year olds... as they will both discover with devastating consequences.

Dead Men's Trousers

Dead Men's Trousers PDF

Author: Irvine Welsh

Publisher: Melville House

Published: 2019-02-26

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 1612197558

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The International Bestseller from the author The New York Times called "blisteringly funny" — it's the wild and wooly crew from Trainspotting back for one last adventure You don't need to have seen the blockbuster movie—nor read the earlier mega-bestselling books—to get what's going on in Dead Men's Trousers: Four no-longer-young men who constantly think back to their bawdy, drug-filled youth together on the streets of Edinburgh, decide they want to join forces for one last caper. Careful what you wish for... "Manages a sort of ragged glory, a life-affirming comic energy . . . A whooping last hurrah for the Trainspotting gang." —The Guardian "Crackles with idiomatic energy and brio." —Publishers Weekly Mark Renton is finally a success. He now makes significant money managing DJs, but the constant travel, airport lounges, soulless hotel rooms, and broken relationships have left him dissatisfied with life. Then he runs into his old partner in crime, Frank Begbie, from whom he'd been hiding for years. But the psychotic Begbie appears to have reinvented himself as a celebrated artist in Los Angeles, and doesn't seem interested in revenge. Meanwhile, back in Edinburgh, Sick Boy and Spud are intrigued to learn that their old friends are back in town, and concoct a new scheme for them all . . . Which is when things start to go horribly wrong. The four men, driven by their personal histories and addictions, circle each other, confused, angry, and desperate. One of these four will not survive . . . Which one is wearing Dead Men's Trousers? Fast and furious, scabrously funny, and weirdly moving, this is a spectacular return of the crew from Trainspotting.

The Blade Artist

The Blade Artist PDF

Author: Irvine Welsh

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2016-04-07

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1473520967

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‘Back to his violent best...dark, gruesome and captivating’ Esquire The most terrifying character from Trainspotting returns. Jim Francis has finally found the perfect life – and is now unrecognisable, even to himself. A successful painter and sculptor, he lives quietly with his wife, Melanie, and their two young daughters, in an affluent beach town in California. Some say he’s a fake and a con man, while others see him as a genuine visionary. But Francis has a very dark past, with another identity and a very different set of values. When he crosses the Atlantic to his native Scotland, for the funeral of a murdered son he barely knew, his old Edinburgh community expects him to take bloody revenge. But as he confronts his previous life, all those friends and enemies – and, most alarmingly, his former self – Francis seems to have other ideas. When Melanie discovers something gruesome in California, which indicates that her husband’s violent past might also be his psychotic present, things start to go very bad, very quickly. The Blade Artist is an elegant, electrifying novel – ultra violent but curiously redemptive – and it marks the return of one of modern fiction’s most infamous, terrifying characters, the incendiary Francis Begbie from Trainspotting.

The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs

The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs PDF

Author: Irvine Welsh

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2009-06-04

Total Pages: 405

ISBN-13: 1407018264

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At Edinburgh's Department of Environmental Health, hard-drinking, womanising officer Danny Skinner wants to uncover secrets: 'the bedroom secrets of the master chefs', secrets he believes might just help him understand his self-destructive impulses. But the arrival of the virginal, model-railway enthusiast Brian Kibby at the department provokes an uncharacteristic response in Skinner, and threatens to throw his mission off course. Consumed by loathing for his nemesis, Skinner enacts a curse, and when Kibby contracts a horrific and debilitating mystery virus, Skinner understands that their destinies are supernaturally bound, and he is faced with a terrible dilemma.

An Experiment in Love

An Experiment in Love PDF

Author: Hilary Mantel

Publisher: Holt Paperbacks

Published: 2007-04-01

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1429900598

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A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year It was the year after Chappaquiddick, and all spring Carmel McBain had watery dreams about the disaster. Now she, Karina, and Julianne were escaping the dreary English countryside for a London University hall of residence. Interspersing accounts of her current position as a university student with recollections of her childhood and an ever difficult relationship with her longtime schoolmate Karina, Carmel reflects on a generation of girls desiring the power of men, but fearful of abandoning what is expected and proper. When these bright but confused young women land in late 1960s London, they are confronted with a slew of new preoccupations--sex, politics, food, and fertility--and a pointless grotesque tragedy of their own. Hilary Mantel's magnificent novel examines the pressures on women during the early days of contemporary feminism to excel--but not be too successful--in England's complex hierarchy of class and status.

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