Nothing beats sinking your teeth into a good book in the summertime. But sometimes, we need a little help choosing our next read. Thankfully, Aberdour author Jenny Colgan was happy to share her favourite books by Scottish writers – including a well-known Fife name.
Jenny, whose bestselling romantic comedy hits include and published her latest novel – – earlier this month. Here’s her recommendations, in her own words: I wasn’t made to study this at school, which is probably why I still love it so much. It’s heart-breaking and gorgeous and romantic and sad.
Shuggie Bain is great too but Young Mungo is even better, which is hard to do in a second novel when the first has been a great success. Young Mungo has more hope in it. It’s just so, so good.
This is a difficult read but an essential one, an astonishing story of triumph over terrible circumstances. I love all the Scottish crime writers: Denise Mina, and Louise Welsh and Chris Brookmyre and Val McDermid – and it’s really really hard to pick a favourite, but really stands out; he’s so sharp and the plots and sense of place in the Rebus novels are just brilliant. Black and Blue is a great place to start.
It’s just a brilliant book, full stop. You can’t stop reading it and it sears; what more do you want from a book? With Andy most people would probably recommend Mayflies, but The Secret Life is the one I come back to all the time or press on people; three long essays about surveillance and modern life; they’re erudite, thoughtful and illuminating. They are clearly set in Scotland and written by someone who lives here so I think they count.
Even though they were published when I was already an adult, my friend the writer Sophie Kinsella and I used to await them as anxiously as any bescarfed 10-year-old. We’d each get one the day they came out then retire to (separate) baths to read them and text each other. Prisoner of Azkaban the best one, obvs.
I didn’t really fully understand Lanark when I read it, but I was so thrilled it existed, if that makes sense; something so weird and cool and impressive and it had such a cool cover. I genuinely couldn’t tell you now what happened in it, just that I was so happy about it at the time. I absolutely love Kathleen Jamie; she’s part of the landscape of Scotland; she’s been the poet laureate and she just writes so wonderfully about the land.
I first came across her lovely poem The Crystal Set but I am very fond of all of her work. I loved this, and the Princess and Curdie too. I think I’ve been trying to replicate the beautiful peace of the star-reflecting water my entire writing life; it was so evocative to me as an imaginative child.
It’s hard to pick a Michel Faber because he is such a genius. Although he said something mean about me in an interview once so I launched a blood feud, but I can’t remember what it was now. Most people would stay the Crimson Petal and the White, which I also love, but the Book of Strange New Things is just so astonishing and mysterious and completely convincing, I 100% believed I was reading the true memoir of an alien missionary.
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