CODEX.

codex.WorldBookDay

Reviews

Interview

SAMUEL BEST

:THE RUBY

SLIPPERS

:THE BLACK

EYED BLONDE

:SHOP FRONT

I

WANNA

BE LIKE

YOU

Aye

Write!

The best bits of

Glasgow’s

International

Book Festival

welcome...

04Oh, I wish I were

James Bond...

This is the first issue of CODEX., your guide

to the latest book releases and events

happening up and down the country. This issue

is all about new novels, one of Scotland’s

biggest book festivals and celebrating World

Book Day in style. Settle back, readers, and

let the words flow.

World Book Day passed in a

literary whirlwind on March 6th.

In honour of our favourite

fictional role models, industry

professionals share whose shoes

they would love to fill for 24

hours.

Cover Story:

Memories from The

MitchellThe highlights of

some of the most popular events

at Aye Write!, Glasgow’s annual

book festival held at the

Mitchell Library.

06

CONTENTS

13

11

Reviews

Author

Interview

A look at some recent

book releases,

including the latest

Philip Marlowe novel

and two author debuts.

Exciting new author

Samuel Best talks to

CODEX. at the launch of

his new book, Shop

Front.

(Find a review of the novel

on page 13.)

Front page photo credit: Nicky Gibson

a day in disguise

"I would be Mrs Hawkins, the

outspoken heroine of Muriel

Spark’s post-war novel A Far Cryfrom Kensington. An overweight

young widow, Mrs Hawkins is

something of an agony aunt,

inviting confidences both from

the people she works with in an

eccentric publishing house, and

from her companions in the dreary boarding house where she lives. I

admire her wit, her perceptiveness, courage and commonsense. If you

want to lose weight, she advises – having at last done so herself – eat and

drink half of your usual intake. If you are unhappy, go to Paris, and so on.

Entertaining but also kind, she would be great company for the day – and

long after that too."

Rosemary

Goring

Literary

Editor,

The Herald

4Photo credit: Kirsty Anderson

World Book Day descended upon us on March 6th and

with it came legions of children and teachers

trooping through school gates kitted out as various

dynamic characters.

Soldiers, spies, witches and detectives: book-based

inspiration opens up a massive scope for the

imagination. Our literary heroes have a huge impact

on us, especially as children. Whether you relate to

a character's personality or idolize their ideals,

there are few among us who wouldn't like to at least

try a day of walking in their shoes.

So why let the kids have all the fun?

Professionals from the literature industry have

commented on whose life, given the chance, they would

like to lead.

"Last year for Book Week

Scotland we created an app which

allows you to discover which

literary character you most

resemble. It turns out that the

character I most resemble is

Zaphod Beeblebrox from TheHitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

“Not very flattering.

“However, the character I’d most like to be is Becky Sharp from one of my

favourite novels, W M Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. Becky is a fraudster, a very

engaging and resourceful one, who is far more intelligent than the men

who surround her. An expert at manipulation, she makes her way from very

humble beginnings to the very apex of society, using the absurd vanities of

the upper-class men who pursue her to rise in society. If this all seems very

cynical – it is; but those who know the novel will also know that principally,

Becky is a great deal of fun, and is certainly one of the greatest female and

comic characters ever created in world literature."

Marc Lambert

Chief

Executive,

The Scottish

Book Trust

"It would definitely have to be

someone from a crime novel and

my choice would be Miss Marple

as I love the characterisation of

her.

“On the surface she is genteel,

dotty and old fashioned BUT

underneath this she is strong,

shrewd and ruthless.

“The way Miss Marple is described changes throughout the stories but

she always remains an appealing character to me. Someone whose life

has been insulated in many ways but shaped by world events (World War

One) she also has a strong bond with her many nieces and nephews as

well as past employees. In her debut novel, The Murder at the Vicarage,

she is described as 'the worst cat in the village' as well as 'dangerous.'"

Lucy Santos

Director,

The Crime

Writer’s

Association

5Photo credit: Courtesy of The CWA

6

7

Aye Write!:The Best

of the FestCODEX. editor Eleanor

O’Neill brings us her favourite

moments from Glasgow’s 2014

Book Festival.

I had a melancholy introduction

to Aye Write! this year, settled in

the main theatre and listening to

memories of one of the late

greats.

Iain Banks, beloved writer of

science fiction and hard-hitting

drama, passed away in June last

year. The conductor of his last

ever interview, Stuart Kelly,

hosted this event in his memory.

Smiling, he recalled Iain’s

insistence that his cancer was

caused by a cosmic ray from a

dying star light years away.

“It took a sun exploding to get

rid of me.”

Easy to believe, especially as

the next hour brought him to life

again on stage through the

anecdotes of his old friends.

Ron Butlin led an emotional

reading of The Quarry,

commenting that with “nothing to

lose”, Iain felt free to let rip in his

last book. He proceeded to

demonstrate with a character’s

colourful tirade about Boris

Johnstone.

Next Ken MacLeod went on

to discuss Iain’s poetry,

something hitherto not

generally a pastime made

public.

While he was describing the

writer, calling him a

“compassionate consumer of

violence in other places”, it

struck me that there is

something fundamentally

heart-wrenching about

listening to the words of a

dead man from the mouth of a

8

life-long friend.

Andrew J. Wilson then opened

a discussion on Iain’s science-

fiction work under ‘Iain M.

Banks’.

The event left off lamenting the

plans Iain had for a culture novel

that never came to fruition.

In the man’s own words:

“Mortality is a side-effect of life.”

William MacIlvanney drew a

packed room on Saturday night,

hardly a surprising turn out for

the much-honoured author of

Laidlaw.

So honoured, in fact, that the

audience were treated to a

lengthy list of his many awards

and William remarked that they

were all on par with being quoted

at in pubs and being told he was

“a great wee writer” by a woman

he once met on Renfield Street.

William then took us on a trip

down memory lane to his life as a

young writer in Kilmarnock and

echoes what many an author has

said before about the profession

being a lonely one.

The conversation is thereafter

directed towards his writing itself.

William is one of numerous

home-grown writers who narrate

their books in Scots and he gets

a laugh with his description of the

style.

“It’s like English in its’

underwear.”

Before the end of the night, he

announced plans for three more

books, including an addition to

the Docherty trilogy.

Liz Lochhead, the current

holder of the Scots Makar title,

spent a good deal of her talk

discussing her inspiration,

including predecessor Edwin

Morgan.

This came after her statement -

“I’m not the best poet in

Scotland.” - drawing loud

protestations from the crowd.

The rest of the evening was

filled with poetry and laughter, Liz

reciting with hardly a glance at

the pages in front of her and

myself being brought back to my

school days with a few rhymes

echoing familiar from the English

classroom.

She was also unafraid to

interact with her audience,

chastising us at one point for

fawning too much.

“You really don’t need to clap

each individual poem; they get

very jealous of each other.”

A highlight was the bilingual

Kidspoem/Bairnsang (written in

English and Scots) that she

gleefully reveals is generally her

first port of call for poetry

readings in England.

A S Byatt (or Dame Antonia)

took part in the Books That Made

9

10

Me series of events that called

well-known faces from different

walks of life to name a few titles

that shaped their lives.

The Booker Prize winner had

an eclectic bunch of novels to

explain, going from the inclusion

of The House on Pooh Corner as

her moment of realising she

could read to a collection of

Proust, read entirely in French to

spite her academic advisor.

“It was at that moment I knew I

was a novelist, not an academic.”

she laughed.

There were also tales inherited

from her mother, Asgard and theGods and the works of the

metaphysical poets. This was

‘intelligent reading’ she always

enjoyed because it was not

strictly ‘meant’ for her.

“I was always deeply bothered

by the idea that women should

write solely about the emotional

sphere because my emotions

cannot function unless my

intellect is functioning.”

She left an impression of a

formidable woman with a deep

appreciation for satire and the

fantastical elements of life.

A joint event featuring Aye

Write! veteran, Christopher

Brookmyer, and new author,

Barry Phillips, revolves around

the connection between games

and books.

Christopher has their audience

in hysterics over scary reviews

his books have received abroad

and leads in to talking about his

role developing a new computer

game.

He has written the story for

Bedlam, a gory science-fiction

multi-platform that will be

released later this year.

“It starts off as all good sci-fi

should: in an industrial estate in

Stirling.”

More laughs. Barry then took

over to talk about his novel that

started as a surreal parody of a

Lee Griffiths blog.

“I’m a literary chancer. i wrote

weird stories on the internet and

now I’m a published author.”

His extract from The TartanSpecial One was a hilariously

odd mix of 80s music jokes, yeti

men and psychopathic

footballers.

Finally, Alisdair Grey held a talk

ahead of the release of his new

book, Alisdair Grey: Of Me andOthers.

“My last book was my life in

pictures. This could be called my

life in prose.

“It is not an autobiography. It is

a collection of essays arranged

slightly chronologically.”

The artist and writer explained

how the book winds through from

school day stories to encounters

with eccentrics like Tommy

Sheridan and up to the present

day.

Despite a crackling PA system

and whining feedback, he held

the audience amused and rapt,

rounding off my time at Aye write!

with a smile.

11

Barely an hour to go until his first

book launch and Samuel Best is

ready with a friendly smile, if a bit of

a shaky one too.

Huddled away in a corner of

Waterstones and surrounded by

promotional materials for his book,

he laughs a little when asked if he’s

nervous.

“I just hope some people come.

Otherwise there’s going to be a lot of

wine left over to drink.”

His debut novel, Shop Front, hit the

shelves April 24 and eager friends,

family and curious minds gathered to

hear what it was about.

“Shop Front is the story of a young

English graduate called Ben who

leaves university in Glasgow with a

good degree, expecting to go on and

get a good job. But in this economy

he can't find work, so he ends up

moving back home to Linlithgow with

his mum and dad and gets a job

stacking shelves.

“He looks down on the job quite a

lot but makes friends with the team of

workers there, though they are in a

world of trouble themselves. They're

involved with a local gang in a violent

argument and Ben finds himself

dragged in.

“I imagined basically the story of a

graduate who couldn't find work and

thought 'how can I make this as bad

as possible for him?' and things just

Photo credit: Nicky Gibson

Life and Strife(Hons)

A Degree in

kind of spiralled from there.”

Shop Front speaks to a disenchanted

generation of

university

graduates,

waving their

degrees at an

unsympathetic

job market.

Less than a

year out of

university

himself, Sam

drew on his

own experiences to breathe life into the story.

“I grew up in Linlithgow, I came to Glasgow to

do Creative Writing and Journalism at university

and I wrote Shop Front in the six months I was

unemployed after graduating. I was writing it as a

kind of 'I hope I don't end up like this'.”

So would his friends and family recognise

themselves in his literary characters?

“In a way... Ben was, to some extent, me. I like

“Ben was,

to some

extent, me.”

12

to think he's a lot more snobby than I am but

he was written largely from my point of view

and my experience working in a shop. There

are stories in it that are fairly based on

customers and the parts about the train tracks

through Linlithgow but there's no one who

could read this and go 'that's you' because I

think that's a dangerous route to go down. Niall

looks a lot like a guy I know but that's about it.”

Inspiration came from other places too. Like

all the best writers, Sam is an avid reader,

even going so far as to edit a literary

magazine, Octavius, with a team of other

graduates.

“I read a lot of different stuff, especially with

running Octavius and getting submissions. But

I'm really into dark crime fiction and a lot of the

Scandinavian crime writers right now. I wasn't

when I was writing Shop Front. I was reading a

lot of Scottish authors like Doug Johnstone and

Alan Bissett who writes from the perspective of

Falkirk and there was a nice locality there. I

look up to Alan a lot. Maybe the crime

stuff was sneaking in to the

background but mostly local stuff.”

It is definitely impressive that he had

the time to write a book at all,

nevermind in the space of six months.

“The majority of Shop Front was

written, lying on the floor of my

girlfriend's room, typing. I wrote it in

short stories, just little blocks that I

turned into chapters. Doing it in

increments worked really well for me.

“Going to study Creative Writing is

what made me seriously consider

being an author. It wasn't just

something to do in my spare time,

people actually made a career out of it.

Through university, I started to get published in

places and it all went from there. It probably

wasn't until I actually left that I thought I really

needed to do something like write a book.”

Incredibly, Sam has also penned a follow-up

to Shop Front already.

“It's going through the editorial process so it

might change but it takes one character, Niall,

and takes place about a year and a half after

the end of Shop Front. He goes to Europe with

a group of mates and, similarly, they have a

horrible time. It all goes downhill for them.

“I wanted to take Niall out of Scotland, which

he's very passionate about, and put him in a

different environment. He meets and has a

semi-relationship with an American girl, who he

thinks is super-cool just by virtue of being

American, and there's nothing romantic about

them but they talk a lot about the differences

between their countries and Niall starts to see

Scotland in a different light.”

And so with this promise of a sequel on the

horizon, who should pick up his book to read?

“I think graduates might enjoy it. They can

relate to that fear of leaving university not

having anything and the attitude that you'll do

well if you go to uni when that's not really true.

And anyone who has a job, really. That there's

a lot more to life than what you do runs right

through this book. But anyone! Everyone

should buy this book!”

Shop Front is available for purchase on

Amazon.co.uk and in all good book retailers.

Photo credit: Nicky Gibson

“I look up to

Alan Bissett

a lot.”

13

Title: Shop Front

Author: Samuel Best

Summary: This debut novel tells the story of Ben, a recent

graduate who, prestigious degree in hand, is forced to move

back in with his parents and take up a menial job at the

local supermarket. Disenchanted by his lack of options,

Ben’s life spirals into a car crash of violent ambushes and

hospital rooms you can’t help but watch unfold.

Thoughts: Shop Front will strike a chord with students

anticipating their first steps out into the big bad world.

There are familiar comments from parents and peers alike

that hit pretty close to home. aside from that, Best

provides an interesting societal commentary on gang

mentality in small towns and on the peculiarly Scottish

cultural phenomenon that is being a patriot and still

managing to hate where you come from.

Title: The Ruby Slippers

Author: Keir Alexander

Summary: When an old woman is hit by a van in the St.

Patrick’s Day Parade, her relatives uncover a piece of

movie history she has secreted away. As more of Rosa’s sad

past is revealed, other stories become intertwined with

the mystery of the ruby slippers.

Thoughts: The Ruby Slippers has themes of misunderstanding

and lost treasures running through it and keeps a

melancholy tone throughout. The narrative occasionally

struggles to hold interest through frequent changes in

perspective but overall the book offers a bittersweet

story that will leave you genuinely touched.

Reviews

Title: The Black Eyed Blonde

Author: Benjamin Black

Summary: When a beautiful woman walks into Philip

Marlowe’s office with a pretty smile and a lover to find,

the private detective can’t resist her charms. But what

starts out as a simple case kicks off a domino effect,

plunging Marlowe into the ruthless world of Bay City’s

upper class.

Thoughts: The Black Eyed Blonde is Black’s attempt to echo

the noir of Raymond Chandler. He mostly succeeds, the

narrative being appropriately heavy handed with metaphors

and a protagonist fancying himself as a philosopher.

Still, the plot has merit and the style eventually helps

to draw the reader into the gritty 50s world.

Editor in Chief: Eleanor O’Neill

With thanks to

FreeDigitalPhotos.net

and the staff of Aye! Write