Mary Smith
Youwriteon.com ISBN978-1-84923-420-7
reviewed by Elspeth Brown

This is a compelling story set in the magnificent countryside of Afghanistan. Mary Smith is a good storyteller and the action well paced. The reader is drawn into the life of Miriam, or Margaret as she was called before she became a Muslim. It is through the eyes of Miriam that we see the everyday lives of Afghans. Her balanced view of these lives is what makes this a heart-warming story in spite of the vicissitudes of her personal life and the encroachment of the Taliban.

Margaret Elphinstone
Canongate. ISBN 978-1-84767-288-9
Reviewed by Ann Clarke

This is a novel of daring ambition, recreating with authority and a clear sense of purpose a world for which the evidence is scanty and ambiguous. Set in the Mesolithic era, the story is structured as a series of narratives in different voices, told over eight nights at 'Gathering Camp', the focal point for the Auk people, a tribe scattered over many different islands and coastal settlements in the Western highlands of Scotland, a landscape - recognisable and yet quite other - evoked with extraordinary clarity. In this society, where 'it's unhealthy to stay in one place too long', small family groups move through the seasons of the year to different camps in a repetitive pattern dictated by the movements of the animals they hunt.

Brian McCabe
Polygon. £9.99. ISBN 9781846971174
Reviewed by Raymond Friel

A poetry collection which comes with six pages of notes at the back is an ominous prospect: either the poet is so clever that we need help with the more obscure references, or the collection is a themed ‘project’ and the reader will need help with the more obscure subject matter. The latter is the case in Brian McCabe’s new collection about numbers and mathematicians, but most of the dangers inherent in the collection-as-project (such as do we care about the subject matter?) are overcome in the first section, ‘Counters’, which gathers strength from the acutely-observed human dimension of the mathematical contexts.

by Philip Andrew. Salt Publishing ISBN 9781844714919
£12.99 Hardback. Reviewed by John Hudson

I read this book from beginning to end in one sitting. Why? Because it is not only good, it is compulsive. Andrew Philip uses poetry as a tool to discover new truths about his personal experience and the experience of people and communities around him. He does this with rare economy, resonant imagery, compassion and insight. He loves language, all three of the tongues of Scotland (although he only echoes the Gaelic through English or Scots as in the beautiful poem ―Lullaby), and he uses English and Scots writing to their strengths. He knows when to sign off and he genuinely understands that less means more but avoids obscurity. He writes about what matters to people.