Loss

"I have chosen this book because, coming from Edinburgh, I see Tony Black as a guy who really writes well about a working-class Edinburgh punter with his main character Gus Dury. And this is a character I recognise. Most of the fiction books about Edinburgh are geared for the tourist but this is actually geared for the punter – the kind of young guy on the dole, sitting in Robbie’s in the afternoon with a pint of lager and a dog-eared copy of a book, which is probably one of Tony Black’s books. It really evokes the place. In Gus Dury you have a very Edinburgh character. If Trainspotting ’s Begbie’s younger brother had gone to university and become a journalist he might have been something like Gus Dury. I can take a good plot-driven book on holiday with me and, in defence of genre fiction, sometimes people with too literary novels forget about plot, which is another bugbear of mine. You have to tell a story and have twists and interesting things happening in it. It is necessary but not sufficient for me. I like a character to develop, change and be tested and have an emotional life too. I really like a sense of place as well because I think in this globalised world things are becoming more and more similar so it is nice to have a strong sense of place and sense the history there. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter I think that is part of the reason why The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series has been so popular, because it takes people to somewhere which is seen as right off the beaten track. In the English-speaking world it is seen as somewhere really exotic, covered in ice and snow. And there are really interesting characters and great story lines as well."