If you were to ask my readers which their favourite of my novels is, most crime fans would say Bone & Cane, Young Adult readers might well say Love Lessons (or, if they’re big music fans, Festival), but the majority, I know, are fondest of The Pretender. It’s my favourite, too, having taken me over twenty years to get it right, then get it published. The novel is about a young man, Mark Trace, with a precocious ability for literary forgery. During the story he successfully fakes Graham Greene, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, Roald Dahl and more. As a coming of age story, it straddles adult and young adult fiction. The YA aspect is one reason why I put Dahl in, that and a rather…
This is a slightly extended version of the review that appears in today’s Nottingham Post. Willy Vlautin likes his songs to speak for themselves. Richmond Fontaine’s new album is a song suite that the band play in full during this two hour show. ‘The High Country’ has some narration, provided by guest vocalist Amy Boone, from The Damnations (replacing Deborah Kelley on the album), but most of the sad story of love, loss, derangement and escape comes through the songs. Willy doesn’t give us any recaps. He does tell us how he started writing the album when he was woken at 4.30am by a logging lorry. Less convincingly, he insists that Bing Crosby is one of his patron saints (‘I know he beat his…
I first heard R.E.M. in 1984 when my friend Mike taped their new album Reckoning for me. It sounded like The Byrds, who we both loved, and became my most played album of the summer. When I saw that they were playing Nottingham’s Rock City that autumn, I had to go, though I couldn’t persuade anyone to go with me. There were less than a hundred people in the audience, but some fans (and Q magazine) have pinpointed this gig as the point where R.E.M. lifted their sound into the classic one that was to define them. Not having seen them before, I can’t comment on the change, but I can say that I went expecting The Byrds and found something more akin to The…
We haven’t visited Wakefield since some old friends moved away, unless you count staying with my younger brother in nearby Streethouse, but the new Barbara Hepworth gallery drew us over for a fine lunch and a leisurely look around the superb new Barbara Hepworth gallery. Our visit neatly complemented our holiday near St Ives last month, when we revisited Barbara Hepworth’s stunning Sculpture Garden, which was just as magical as we found it on our first visit, back in the 90’s. As a Yorkshireman, I’m particularly proud to see such a magnificent new gallery at the edge of town (remarkably easy to get to by car, too). The David Chipperfield designed building fits the space well, with the windows opening onto superb views of the…
This Sunday there’s Heritage Open Day at Bagthorpe Gardens, Hucknall Road, Sherwood, Nottingham NG5 1DA (Opposite Teesdale Road). These are the allotments at the back of my house, the world’s oldest – dating from the 1840s. Some are cottage gardens, others more traditionally allotmenty. There’ll be displays of photos and artefacts. Refreshments, plants and produce for sale. (My partner’s baking cakes today). Wear stout shoes! Open: 12noon – 4pm. Tours at 12.30pm and 2.30pm. Oh, and I’ll be reading from my new aylum seekers & allotments novel, Secret Gardens, at 2pm. Selling and signing afterwards too. So why not come along? It’s all free (except for the refreshments and books, of course). Good reason to recycle an allotment photo above. This week’s song of the…