Back from a mini tour of Yorkshire and Stockport and cheering for supporting act Indignation Meeting
Bitter old croc
JOHN GREEN suggests you pass on a novelette that recycles the communist past without hope or tangible history
The Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion monument, in Ottawa, remembering Canadian volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, was unveiled on October 20 2001 and was selected through a competition won by Oryst Sawchuk Pic: Gabriel/CC
ALISTAR FINDLAY is mesmerised by this multiple ‘Visions of Scotland’ assault on the audience’s eyes and senses
The Star's critics ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA reviews I Am Love, The Penguin Lessons, Freaky Tales, The Thicket
MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
The Alligator’s Trap
By Antonio Soler (trans Kathryn Phillips-Miles & Simon Deefholts), Clapton Press, £12.99
THIS enigmatic and elliptical novelette left this reader very dissatisfied. A Spanish refugee, living out his twilight years in Canada delivers a bitter, circular soliloquy, taking us from the present to the past and back again on a slippery, uncertain path.
The narrator is a political refugee from Spain, who is working as a hotel receptionist in Toronto, Canada.
More from this author
While the group known as the Colourists certainly reinvigorated Scottish painting, a new show is a welcome chance to reassess them, writes ANGUS REID
ANGUS REID recommends an exquisite drama about the disturbing impact of the one child policy in contemporary China
The phrase “cruel to be kind” comes from Hamlet, but Shakespeare’s Prince didn’t go in for kidnap, explosive punches, and cigarette deprivation. Tam is different.
ANGUS REID deconstructs a popular contemporary novel aimed at a ‘queer’ young adult readership
