ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
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Those magnificent men
by Mandy Macdonald
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by the lives of Charles and Mary Bagot, and the insight this biography shines on the morals of pre-Victorian society
GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
The people waited. They turned inward to the house, the family, the self. They tried not to dwindle and shrivel
like last year’s apples. Not to evaporate
on the turncoat air.
They tried not to be cruel, most of them,
most of the time. They tried
not to rage at everything
but to use their anger justly.
They tried to be patient.
They watched while fools kite-high
on unearned power, reckless avarice,
cawed their carrion song, soared on the waxy wings
of a hundred thousand false promises, spun
death-denying spins, looped breathtaking loops,
lied and lied and lied.
The people, thinking themselves helpless,
yet wishing not to be unkind,
watched, nonetheless, for the fools to fall to earth.
Mandy Macdonald lives in Aberdeen. Her small collection, The Temperature of Blue was recently published by Blue Salt Collective.
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