Modern Scottish Collections

I’ve now got my hands on Louise Welsh’s new novel from Canongate, Naming the bones and am intrigued by the opening scenes of the thriller – set here in our very own National Library of Scotland . Welsh’s academic scholar of a hero is researching a dead Scottish poet of the 1970s and naturally enough is discovering the treasures available in the manuscript collections at NLS. The opening chapters feature a “senior librarian” with “a jolly, monkish cast” and a “head bookfinder” with a “saggy cardigan.” The bookfinder is soon drinking coffee with the academic across George IV Bridge in The Elephant House and seems to be providing enigmatic clues for our hero’s search. Welsh is a clever writer, and the world of books served her well in her first big success The cutting room, so it will be interesting to discover how she gets her man from the Reading Room in NLS to the promised muddy denoument in a Lismore burial ground.

A good selection of Scottish interest items was received by the National Library of Scotland this week, including the new novel by Louise Welsh. Naming the bones tells the story of a Scottish academic’s quest to unearth information on a Scottish poet who died 30 years previously in mysterious circumstances. An award winning Scottish author, Louise lives and works in Glasgow. Her work has been translated into 20 languages and this is her fourth novel.

Also received this week was Red dust road, the memoir by Scottish author Jackie Kay. Jackie was born in Edinburgh to a Scottish mother and Nigerian father and was adopted by Scottish communists at the age of two. This book traces Jackie’s search for her birth parents, describing her feelings about family and what makes us who we are.

Scottish poet Edwin Morgan was 90 years old last month and to mark the occasion the Scottish Poetry Library and Mariscat Press have jointly published Eddie@90, a collection of tributes from friends and admirers, edited by Robyn Marsack and Hamish Whyte. Our copy was received this week and includes contributions in poetry and prose from many distinguished figures including Liz Lochhead, Ali Smith and James Robertson.

Also amongst this week’s titles was Reforming the Scottish parish: the Reformation in Fife, 1560-1640 by John McCallum. Part of the St Andrews Studies in Reformation History series, this volume discusses the impact of the Reformation on the ministry and worship in Fife.

Another new addition was RLS in love: the love poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson by Stuart Campbell. The first anthology devoted exclusively to this aspect of Stevenson’s writings, this volume also includes an introductory discussion of his life and poems in this context.

We’ve just received a major consignment of translations here through an arrangement with the Scottish Arts Council.Who are the popular Scots in Eastern Europe and beyond ? Prolific thriller queen Val McDermid seems to be a star in Bulgarian,with multiple titles, and the versatile Louise Welsh is doing well in Croatian and Serbian, while new Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy’s poems can be read now in Slovak. Good to see some plays travelling too – Sue Glover’s successes, including Bondagers, appear in Czech – and Douglas Dunn’s poetry makes it into Armenian.