The Bookseller
"Ironic satire in a self-help book full of sorrow... quintessentially Scottish and strangely hypnotic"
Don Paterson - Winner of Whitbread Poetry Prize 2003
"The Feng-Shui of broken windows... Gull Soup for the soul..."
Daily Telegraph, October 22, 2004
'Very amusing . . . a fine, affectionate portrait in black and grey of a culture that looks unflinchingly on a hard life.'
Herald, October 30, 2004
'By turns funny, poignant and downright disturbing.'
Scottish Review of Books, October 31, 2004
'A profound meditation [and] a bracing antidote to the cloying sweetness of New Age spirituality.'
Daily Mail
'At last, an antidote to self-help prattle . . . and a celebration of Scottish Calvinist common sense.'
Product Description
A collection of essays and aphorisms about Scottish Calvinism. This is Scottish literary humour at its finest.
'A work of contemporary shamanism, with all the bluff, poetry, deranged humour, sleight-of-hand and real magic that implies.' Don Paterson.
This is the first (and maybe the last) self-help guide that promises to make you feel a lot worse after you read it. A hilarious satire on freeze-dried mysticism and off-the-shelf enlightenment, it is also a haunting and lyrical reflection on places, voices and memories -- a literary journey into the heart of North-East darkness.
'A perfect evocation of Scotland's mysterious love affair with loss and sorrow. A powerful dram of Zen Calvinism.' Richard Holloway
About the Author
Bill Duncan is the author of The Smiling School for Calvinists (Bloomsbury, 2001), an outstanding debut collection of short stories. He is a Head Teacher of English in a Scottish secondary school and divides his time between Dundee, St Madoes and Orkney.
