Take Four Books: Jenni Fagan
On BBC Sounds: Jenni Fagan tells presenter James Crawford about her new novel, The Delusions, in which she takes readers to the afterlife – or, at least, to its anteroom. Jenni’s three chosen influences are Nina Cassian’s poem “Temptation” (1966), Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN (1818), & Jeanette Winterson’s WEIGHT (2005)
Bang-Bang You’re Dead by Muriel Spark
via BBC Sounds
Sybil’s friends begin to see her in a new light when they watch film footage, peppered with hippos, poets & shooting affairs, taken during her time in Africa. First published 1958. Dramatised by Gowan Calder.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002tzst
#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #MurielSpark #womenwriters #radiodrama
Where to start with: Muriel Spark
Today, 13 April, marks 20 years since the death of the novelist, short story writer, poet & essayist Muriel Spark. She was best known for her 22 novels – uncanny, astute & witty – beginning with her 1957 debut The Comforters. James Bailey, the author of a new biography, Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark, guides readers through her oeuvre.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/apr/09/where-to-start-with-muriel-spark
🟡🔵 "I don’t write to hide from the world."
at @citapress
On the legacies of Kathleen Collins; love and literary recovery; and women who tell women's history: Anna Julia Cooper, Gerda Lerner, & Emma Willard.
#Literature #WomenWriters
https://citapress.substack.com/p/i-dont-write-to-hide-from-the-world
“Certain individuals live delusionally, thinking they’re perfect, and so The Delusions was me asking, ‘What if everyone had to face who they really are?’, even if it doesn’t happen in this life but in the next. The only real value you have is your soul.”
—SNACK Magazine interviews Jenni Fagan about her new novel, THE DELUSIONS
https://snackmag.co.uk/jenni-fagan-the-delusions-souls-complicity-and-instinct-interview
I wad ha’e gi’en him my lips tae kiss,
Had I been his, had I been his…
—“Mary’s Song”, by Marion Angus (1865–1946) – born #OTD, 27 March
published in THE TINKER’S ROAD and Other Verses (1924)
“She has an authentic voice straight out of the ballad tradition, an eerie shimmer to her best poems”
—Kathleen Jamie
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #womenwriters #Scots #Scotslanguage
The Camomile: An Invention
Catherine Carswell
Published by the British Library Women Writers series in 2024: Catherine Carswell’s 1922 novel of a woman’s struggle for a fully realised, independent, creative life – a Scottish forerunner to Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own
4/4
“the novel we made the strongest case for was THE CAMOMILE by Catherine Carswell … mainly because of the energy, humour and sheer readability”
—The National Library of Scotland blog on making recommendations to the British Library’s Women Writers series
3/4
https://blog.nls.uk/the-camomile-by-catherine-carswell-is-back-in-print/
“Military moustache, boxer’s broken nose, narrowed stare, that glint of menace some women find irresistible. I was face-to-face with Herbert Jackson”
—Ajay Close on WHAT WE DID IN THE DARK: her novel of Catherine Carswell’s disastrous first marriage
2/4
https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2020/12/opening-doors-how-i-wrote-what-we-did-in-the-dark/
For me, writing is a trade, like plumbing or joinery. Doubtless some writers are extraordinary human beings living extraordinary lives, most are not. However fanatical I may feel about the work of certain writers, I don’t need to know who they slept with. As for novels about writers, I actively avoid them. But, reader, I […]
“The life & career of the gifted Glaswegian writer Catherine Carswell was marked by such alarming & recurrent notoriety that her present obscurity is baffling”
—Emma Garman in the Paris Review on the life & work of Catherine Carswell (1879–1946)—born #OTD, 27 March
1/4
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/06/10/feminize-your-canon-catherine-carswell/
Assoc for Scottish Literature
pablolarah
