Children of Albion Rovers
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Children of Albion Rovers is the best-selling and critically acclaimed collection of novellas that features six of the most exciting young writers to emerge from Scotland in the 90s: award-winning authors Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner, Gordon Legge, and James Meek and introducing the striking new talents of Laura Hird and Paul Reekie. Children of Albion Rovers is a world of tripped-out crematorium attendants (Alan Warner), vengeful traffic-wardens (James Meek), born-again vinyl junkies (Gordon Legge), and teenage girls who sexually humiliate their teachers (Laura Hird). Also included are Paul Reekie’s fictional account of ideals betrayed, and Irvine Welsh’s first ever sci-fi story, featuring alien space casuals wreaking havoc through the known universe. The resulting mix is intoxicating to say the least.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Six Scottish authors--Irvine Welsh, Gordon Legge, Alan Warner, James Meek, Laura J. Hird and Paul Reekie--contribute novellas to this raw-edged collection edited by fellow Scot Williamson, former publisher of Rebel, Inc. magazine. In Welsh's (Trainspotting) "The Rosewell Incident," a clique of tobacco-dependent aliens decide to touch down in Rosewell, Scotland, because, as the alien leader explains, "we ken the score. It's only Scotland. Nae cunt listens tae youse dippit fuckers." Of the six writers in this desperately hip anthology, only Welsh tackles Scotland's political impotence head on, and the fearless antagonism, variations of voice and effortless momentum of his story distinguish it as the most ambitious and accomplished of the bunch. Even when Scots angst isn't the obvious subject of these novellas, however, it makes veiled appearances--for instance, in the self-indulgent intellectualism of Reekie's (Zap, You're Pregnant) "Submission," which pokes fun at the naivete of Scottish folklore, or in Whitbread nominee Warner's (Morvern Callar) trippy novella-of-manners, "After the Vision." While Warner owes a clear debt to Joyce, Meek's (McFarlane Boils the Sea; Last Orders) stylized "Brown Pint of Courage" pays homage to that great-grandfather of Celtic modernism, Thomas Carlyle. "Pop Life" is Legge's (In Between Talking About the Football; The Shoe) sentimental, predictable account of a three-way friendship fostered by a shared lust for record-collecting. Hird's debut, "The Dilating Pupil," meanwhile, in which a self-satisfied Edinburgh high-school teacher is seduced by his star student and falls victim to a range of cutting-edge chemical stimuli, is the most humanly compelling and vividly imagined piece in the collection. The urgent, accented voices here comprise a motley crew but one worth listening to.