Chris McQueer’s debut novel Hermit tells the story of Jamie, a reclusive nineteen-year-old who lives with his mum, Fiona. In the opening page, Jamie remembers playing his Game Boy, aged six, and complaining to his gran that his mum never says ‘I love you’. Fiona confides in the reader: ‘I’m not the type to say things like […] The post ‘Hermit’, by Chris McQueer appeared first on The Bottle Imp.| The Bottle Imp
At the beginning of May 2025, Elon Musk announced plans to step back from his leading role in Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk is now focused on another strategy for saving humanity – abandoning Earth and colonising Mars. In an interview with Fox News, he stated that, ‘Mars is life insurance for life […] The post ‘Night Vision’, by Pippa Goldschmidt appeared first on The Bottle Imp.| The Bottle Imp
Shane Strachan’s debut poetry collection DWAMS (2024) is dedicated ‘Tae the folk o Aiberdeen, city o unheard vyces’, brought to the surface by prioritising a variety of languages and environments. The poems jump from Doric to English and minority languages in Britain such as Polish, conveying a sense of familiarity and groundedness around North-East Scotland, while addressing […] The post ‘DWAMS’, by Shane Strachan appeared first on The Bottle Imp.| The Bottle Imp
Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) remains the most elusive of the great European modernist poets. Educated partly in South Africa, at an English-speaking public school, but remaining most of his life in Lisbon, he wrote his poetry in Portuguese. Little was published in his lifetime; on his death, famously, a chest was discovered with reams of unpublished […] The post ‘Fower Pessoas’, by Fernando Pessoa and Colin Bramwell (tr.) appeared first on The Bottle Imp.| The Bottle Imp
In The Ayrshire Nestling, Gerry Cambridge takes us back to his troubled teenage years. In its pages, the author follows the development of a boy named Jed. Jed is the name the author pins on his earlier self, that person from whom he has grown but also differentiated. So the book amounts to a re-examination of […] The post ‘The Ayrshire Nestling’, by Gerry Cambridge appeared first on The Bottle Imp.| The Bottle Imp
A confession: I do not speak Italian. Well, I mostly do not speak Italian. I have what I’d call a generic Catholic’s passing knowledge of Latin vocabulary, as well as snippets of Romance languages from one-off trips, movies, and, of course, memes. All this to say, my lack of Italian renders my review of this book really […] The post ‘Non dimenticare gli angeli’ by Christopher Whyte / Crìsdean MacIlleBhàin appeared first on The Bottle Imp.| The Bottle Imp
Though popularised by Shakespeare, the tale of Macbeth had already gone through countless iterations before the Bard penned his Scottish play. Today the story continues to inspire retellings, both those which bear the influence of Shakespeare’s tragedy and those which seek to delve further back into the story’s historical roots. Zinnie Harris’s play Macbeth (An Undoing) finished […] The post ‘Upon the Corner of the Moon’, by Valerie Nieman appeared first on The Bottle Imp.| The Bottle Imp
Iain Maloney’s third poetry collection, Mountain Retreats, concentrates his poetry into the perceptual minimalism of Japanese-influenced haiku. Following an introductory poem suggesting a confrontation with mortality, he escapes to the mountains to regain perspective and find a voice for autobiographical moments which are never explicit but obviously personal and difficult to confront. The themes of the […] The post ‘Mountain Retreats’ by Iain Maloney appeared first on The Bottle Imp.| The Bottle Imp
This new novel by Margaret Elphinstone, former Professor of Creative Writing at Strathclyde, is, like much of her other work, ‘mostly historical and about people living on “the edge”’, as she describes it herself, which can also seem similar to science fiction. Its appearance marks her return to long form story-telling after a period of fifteen years. […] The post ‘Lost People’, by Margaret Elphinstone appeared first on The Bottle Imp.| The Bottle Imp
To refer to this as a book of poetry would not only be misleading, it would also be to undersell it. Yes, it contains striking examples of Kristján Norge’s adept poetical abilities, but it also contains a wealth of other literary and psychological conundrums for the reader to unpick. It is as if MacGillivray has […]| The Bottle Imp