Books of the Year 2025 Part 1

TonyInterrupter by Nicola Barker

Nicolas Barker’s fourteenth novel (but her first since 2019) continues to give the impression that she writes exactly what she likes with little care for literary fashion – and, appropriately enough, it is a celebration of non-conformity which begins with the interruption of a jazz concert: “Is this honest? Are we all being honest here?” The interruption is filmed, as is the angry response of band member Sasha who labels the offender as a “small-town TonyInterrupter”, a sobriquet which soon becomes a viral hashtag. Art about authenticity has never been less serious since Wilde as the initial incident ricochets around various band and audience members in a prose style which is deliberately divergent to the point that even the author feels compelled to comment, “This is a dreadful waste of time. It’s silly.” Silly or not, Barker manages to make us care about her characters as we laugh at them.

The Lowlife by Alexander Baron

Alexander Baron’s The Lowlife, originally published in 1963, would have claim to be the rediscovery of the year if not for the fact that it has been rediscovered (more than once) before.  No matter – it well deserves its latest round of enthusiastic readers. Grounded by its incredible sense of place – London, towards the end of the fifties – its irregular protagonist, Harryboy, is the kind of character who might carry any novel, a chancer intent on not taking his chances, averse to settling down or standing still, whose natural instinct to avoid entanglement is unwillingly undermined by a child, the son of new neighbours in the building where he stays. The parents could not be more ordinary, a lonely father and unaffectionate mother.  Apparently proud to be a lowlife, Harry regards himself as such not for his carefree lifestyle but because of a wartime regret he cannot forget. A novel which refuses to die because it feels so alive.

The Fate of Mary Rose by Caroline Blackwood

Another rediscovered novel, though from the more recent 1981 (still over forty years ago!) is Caroline Blackwood’s The Fate of Mary Rose. Blackwood takes the trappings of a crime novel and twists it into something that is both difficult to look at yet impossible to take your eyes off. As is usually the case with this author, everyone is awful, from the narrator, Rowan, a historian with a predilection for using women, to his maniacally protective wife, Cressida, who, following a local murder, refuses to let her daughter (Mary Rose) out of her sight. Rather than her daughter’s safety, her obsession is with the murder itself as she insists Mary Rose memorises all the details and attends the funeral. Rowan meanwhile is aware of his wife’s deteriorating mental state but blind to any responsibility he might bear for it despite spending most of his time in London with his mistress. Most impressively, Blackwood manages a tour de force ending which will leave you gasping.

Dreaming of Dead People by Rosalind Belben

Anything Blackwood can do, Rosalind Belben can do darker. Where we might think we hear the former cackling wickedly in the background, Belben’s laughter is a more uncomfortable experience. Dreaming of Dead People was published two years earlier than The Fate of Mary Rose, the last of four novels she published in the 1970s. Written in six sections (“I visualized the arrangement of these chapters to echo the compartments of a biography”) the  novel reflects on a life at the midway point touching on Belben’s childlessness and her relationship with animals through a character called Lavinia. Belben is what one might refer to as an acquired taste, a moving section relating her relationship with a particular dog sitting alongside an extended essay on masturbation with an electric toothbrush. If that is not variety enough, one chapter is interspersed with middle-English songs. Behind all this, however, is a desire for unflinching truth from a writer who does genuinely seem fearless.

The Story of the Stone by James Kelman

James Kelman has the unusual distinction of being both a strong candidate for the UK’s greatest living writer and without a publisher in his own country. Luckily the small American publisher, PM Press, have stepped in, releasing a new novel, collections of essays and short stories, and a book of interviews in the last few years. This year saw the publication of The Story of the Stone which collects Kelman’s shortest stories, a genre he excels at. It contains 96 pieces ranging from four pages to less than a page (including perhaps his most famous short short story, ‘Acid’, which features as a footnote in Alasdair Gray’s Lanark). They demonstrate Kelman’s range of both style and subject matter for those who continue to think of him as a one-note writer. Anyone who appreciates the craft of writing should not be without this book, or, indeed, all of Kelman’s work.

From Scenes Like These by Gordon Williams

From Scenes Like These is another novel to have been rediscovered more than once and bears the distinction of having been shortlisted for the first Booker Prize in 1969. Unfortunately, its author Gordon Williams refused to stick to literary fiction, cowriting the Hazell books with Terry Venables when both football and crime fiction were much less fashionable. This, however, is a wonderful novel, exposing the harshness of both urban and rural life in 1950s Scotland. It also touches on contemporary concerns, however, as its central character, school-leaver fifteen-year-old Dunky Logan, wrestles with what it means to be a man. Its portrayal of misogynistic attitudes among the farm workers still has the power to shock, more so as we may fear they are not so outdated as we hope. Though not without the occasional moment of hope, it is a bleak work with little the way of redemption, A Catcher in the Rye for those who cannot afford therapy.

From Scenes Like These

You will perhaps know Paisley-born writer Gordon Williams as the author of The Siege of Trencher’s Farm, the basis for Sam Peckinpah’s controversial (and hated by Williams) film Straw Dogs. Or maybe as the co-author (with Terry Venables) of the Hazell detective series, briefly adapted for television in the late 1970s. However, he also has a more literary claim to fame as one of the six authors shortlisted for the original Booker Prize in 1969 (the only time two Scottish writers have been nominated, the other being Muriel Spark):

“My editor, who was a judge, told me I’d won. In fact my wife and I had already spent the 5,000 quid on a new bathroom. When my name wasn’t read out I was bloody pissed off.”

The novel in question was From Scenes Like These, recently reissued for the first time since 1996. The title comes from Burns’ The Cottar’s Saturday Night (“From scenes like these old Scotia’s grandeur springs”) and is meant entirely ironically as the rural life depicted in the novel is mean and brutal, as is the urban landscape it exists alongside, an estate called the Darroch scheme based on Ferguslie Park where Williams was brought up. The novel’s central character is the fifteen-year-old Dunky Logan, recently left school and employed at Craig’s farm. Though intelligent, Dunky is keen to leave education and childhood behind and become a man:

“It made him feel tough and hard being a farm worker who had to be yoked by the time other men were only crawling out of their beds.”

There’s something of Chris Guthrie of Sunset Song in the two sides to Dunky’s character, which, in a sign he is more educated than his fellow farm workers, he compares to “young Jim Hawkins, able to talk to both Long John Silver and Squire Trelawney.” He also has an awareness they lack, a sense of his life from the outside:

“There was another daft notion which made him wonder if he was normal, the idea he had that all sorts of people, some he knew and some he didn’t, were watching him wherever he was.”

Yet at the same time he calculates that he will have to fight McCann, a young man in his twenties, who sets out to bully him, even though he knows he will lose:

“In a way he was beginning to look forward to getting it over with, hammering or not. It had to come sometime.”

This need to prove yourself through violence is one aspect of the novel’s examination of what we would now call toxic masculinity; a dismissive, misogynistic attitude towards women is the other. This is highlighted throughout the dialogue of the farm workers – one in particular, Telfer, has a reputation for seduction and abandonment, whereas another, McPhail, is known as a ‘knee-padder’ – that is, someone who spies on courting couples. The appearance of the farm’s new housekeeper gives license to their comments, especially as she has disability that means she walks with a metal support on one leg: “She’s a bloody limpy dan!” announces McCann. When she falls over, scared by Craig’s dog, Telfer picks her up:

“She’s a bloody smasher…I felt the tits on her when I picked her up!”

Interestingly, Williams introduces the housekeeper, Mary O’Donnell, by leaving Dunky and focusing the narrative on her journey to the farm. If the reader hopes for a more sympathetic character, however, we soon discover that Mary has her own plans and as much intent to use men as they might have to use her: “they were making a mistake if they thought she wasn’t just as hard as they were.”

From Scenes Like These is a determinedly unredemptive novel. Any glimmer of hope soon fades, whether it is Dunky’s love for a scheme girl, Elsa, or his chances of a professional football career. In both cases there is an element of self-sabotage in Dunky’s actions, but dreams in general, like Telfer’s talk of emigrating to Canada, are seen as unrealistic in the novel. The only character with anything resembling integrity is a recluse widely believed to be a tinker but in fact a minister who has given up on civilisation after experiencing the trenches of the First World War:

“I’ll maybe believe in their civilisation the day I hear of God and the king of England sharing a two-apartment Corporation house.”

That Willie Craig, son of the farm owner, goes every so often to talk to the tinker, just as Dunky finds some peace with the rabbits he keeps, suggests that Williams can see another side to his characters, yet both Willie and Dunky see these outlets as unmanly and something to be ashamed of.

From Scenes Like These brings the Scotland of the 1950s vividly to life in all its brutality and horror. Williams describes both the farm and the scheme with visceral detail and dark humour, an unvarnished view of reality that must have been just as shocking in its time as Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting. Tellingly, its story of Dunky’s desperate determination to prove himself a man is one that still resonates today.