Louise Welsh and Chris Brookmyre
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Hello, welcome to A Good Read, where we talk about some books we love. And with me today are two top crime writers. Louise Welsh is the author of 10 novels, among them The Cutting Room, The Second Cut, and most recently, The Cut Up. She's also a professor of creative writing at the University of Glasgow. Chris Brookmeyer began his career with Quite Ugly One Morning, later adapted for TV with James Nesbitt, while his many novels since include Black Widow, The Cracked Mirror and, just out, Quite Ugly One Evening. Chris, would you start us off?
What are you suggesting is a good read? I'm suggesting Espedere Street by my late friend Ian Banks, which is an almost fictionalised biography of a 70s rock star who, at the start of the novel, explains that he planned to kill himself, but then he's going to elaborate on why he changed his mind. which is the result of a tumultuous and fairly uproarious week spent in Glasgow. And that's intercut with the story of the band from him in his teenage years all the way through their 70s excess. And it's a novel that I've loved since I first read it in about 1990. I was in my late adolescence, but it's the stuff of male adolescent dreams, certainly about being a 70s rock star. But it's so much more than that.
It's a very tender story that makes you care deeply for this wounded individual.
Well, Louise Welsh, Ian Banks' Espadaire Street.
Oh, well, this took me back 40 years because it was 40 years since I last read this book. I couldn't quite believe it. I had to look at the publication date. It's like one of those albums that you found in everybody's house. Everybody in Scotland of a certain age had this book on their shelf, partly because it's set in Scotland. And as you said, that's Scottish sensibility. But it took me back to a time before social media, when people smoked in pubs, walking through the wet and the grime. And the point before the bridge to nowhere that goes over the M8 was built on. But I think it's a really beautiful book. And I think there's something very nostalgic about it, about those 70s rock scenes. But the scenes that were more alive to me were the scenes that were set in the present day.
And those scenes seemed more alive, actually, than the rock star excess. And it's partly because he's sort of deep in misery, isn't he? And yet he jokes. He's mired in regret. And I suppose when he's looking back to the past, that seems...
less real almost that was like almost like a dream and contemporary 1980s set material was immediate but that's when he's living the regret I hadn't I hadn't read Espadere Street before and it took me three or four pages to get into it I think because you're bombarded with these names to begin with you get a whole list of names including you know Danny our hero about four pseudonyms under which he's operated at various times But once I got past that, I really enjoyed it. What I liked about it, I understand what you're saying about the regret and so on, but there was so much fun in it as well. You could tell that Ian Banks, or it felt as though he'd had great fun, sort of wild fun, creating so much, including the house where, well, I say the house, the domain in which Danny lives.
We're told that he lives in this fake church that was built by a sort of mad with grief family. millionaire in the 19th century and it's even got a fake churchyard outside and for some reason it's full of Eastern European goods I mean Eastern European alcohol vodka of course and plum brandy and stuff but also sort of I don't know bits of engineering I mean are we ever told why?
It was because pre the end of the Cold War, there was issues with them actually paying in cash for royalties. So certain albums, he was paid in lieu with things like tractors and vodka.
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