Inner Space
Travels in Imagination
EXPLORE ISSUES
Inner Space can mean many things, whether swimming across the globe, navigating fantasy realms, or simply ruminating on life, and there's no finer example of that breadth than the fiction, children's books, poetry and more you'll find in this issue. Let's dive in.
A tale of two times. It’s 2019 – Hannah Greenshields has her first day at Memory Lane, a memory clinic in Edinburgh’s centre, which houses advanced technology which allows clients to relive their favourite memories for a substantial fee. Fly back to 1975 and John Valentine, another client, is reliving his wedding day over and over, hoping to change one key event he can’t forget. John soon realises his memory isn’t such a safe place after all. The pair must work together to get John back to the real world before it’s too late.
Ross Sayers had a quick chat with Books From Scotland to celebrate his latest release.
The Everliving Memory of John Valentine By Ross Sayers Published by Fledgling Press
Another publication day for you – congratulations! Could you tell us about your latest book The Everliving Memory of John Valentine?
Thank you so much! Of course, the book is about a mysterious memory facility in the middle of Edinburgh, Memory Lane, which allows wealthy clients to pay to relive 12 hour segments from their memory. The narrative is mainly split between Hannah, who is a new employee of Memory Lane, and John, who is reliving his wedding day over and over again. Hannah discovers that clients can’t be automatically removed from their memories when the 12 hour period is up, and it’s her job to go into client’s memories if they refuse to leave after their allotted time. I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that Hannah ends up going into John’s memory at some point…
You’re a bit of a writing machine! This is your second book in the space of a year, and a year, let’s face it, that has been quite challenging. How have you stayed motivated to write?
I definitely think I had a bit more motivation at the start of lockdown, when th...
Nina Mingya Powles first learned to swim in Borneo, where her mother was born and her grandfather studied freshwater fish. There, the local swimming pool became her first body of water. Through her life there have been others that have meant different things, but have still been, in their own way, home: from the wild coastline of New Zealand to a pond in the northwest of London.
Nina’s debut essay collection Small Bodies of Water, which weaves together personal memories, dreams and nature writing, and what it means to belong, won the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize for nature writing. You can read a brilliant excerpt below.
Extract taken from Small Bodies of Water By Nina Mingya Powles Published by Canongate Books
‘I think about loving swimming the way you love somebody. How a kiss happens, gravitational.’ Leanne Shapton...
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE
David Robinson reviews: News of the Dead, Rizzio and Rose Nicholson
‘I don’t think there’s been a summer when so many Scottish writers have brought the past so vividly back to life. ’
‘Is it possible for books to read? For books to dream within books?’
The Book According To… Val McDermid
‘I also plan to tell a series of damn good stories with some dead bodies along the way!’
‘When you’re safely ensconced in a bubble, you are in a comfort zone.’
The Fair Botanists: Interview with Sara Sheridan
‘For me the fascination is always in asking the question: where do we come from?’
‘God was the first and only librarian.’
‘Thou shalt not skip the line’
Strategy: Get Arts – 35 Artists Who Broke the Rules
35 Artists Who Broke the Rules
‘Some bizzum’s been sittin in ma chair.’
The Darlings: An interview with Angela Jackson
‘I wanted to explore what [accidentally killing someone] might do to someone.’
‘many of us spend our entire lives in hiding’
‘I’d be famous and remembered for ever because I’d choose its name.’
‘Sometimes I wonder if I had known that it was going to take me fourteen years to paint this painting of the Crucifixion, and what it would take for me to paint it.’
‘Madame Jeanne is concerned with the glamour, the story-telling of knitwear.’
‘Up the mountain. Through birch bones. Through leaf-whispers. Away from camp, where the children should be rising, bleary, pre-dawn, putting on orange T-shirts.’
‘Quiet meditations, the start of a lovely dawn / broken, piece by piece as day breaks.’
ALSO ON BOOKS FROM SCOTLAND
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Food, Whisky, Life by Ghillie BaŞan
‘Pastries filled with ground nuts, baked fruit or creamy, semolina mixtures, and bathed in honey or …
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A Chaos of Light: New Writing Scotland
‘The attic lowed like a crystal haal, last I saa her – / dark-eyed and ready tae furgit me.’
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‘The pleasures of the unexamined life and all that. Dan had read somewhere that the lower classes – …
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Mrs Burke & Mrs Hare by Michelle Sloan
‘If you rip these bodies from the place that’s been blessed as their final place of peace, where fam …
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It’s Hotting Up! Summer Reading Suggestions
‘Carso sits on the very north edge of Britain, higher than the Highlands, where the swirling waters …
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David Robinson Reviews: To See Ourselves by Alistair Moffat
‘This confluence of styles – analytical yet elegiac, objective yet personal – makes To See Ourselves …
FEATURED AUTHOR:
James McGonigal
James McGonigal is a poet was a lecturer in English at the University of Glasgow. He was, for many years, a close friend and confidant of the poet, Edwin Morgan and wrote an acclaimed biography of the poet, Beyond the Last Dragon, in 2010. McGonigal al …
FEATURED PUBLISHER:
Frontline Noir
Frontline Noir, founded in 2008, is a publisher of current affairs and recent history titles covering controversial topics and events, often written by people who were participants or otherwise affected. Our aim is to ensure such subjects are given a h …