Will I love Scabby Queen?

It's a panoramic tour of the last four decades of Scotland's history, in the company of folk-rockers and radical activists, strivers and failures. It's a gritty immersive reality (but not grim in the manner of Stuart Douglas or James Kelman). Exuberant, careening, loud, stoned, sad, depressed—and thoroughly engaging. A really impressive achievement is the great number of characters—even minor ones are indelibly drawn—and the jigsaw-puzzle way they fit together to complete the story, even as the telling moves back and forth in time and location.

Scabby Queen opens with the death by suicide of Clio Campbell, at different times a popstar, a political activist, a lover of life.

The book stretches back five decades to tell her story, from different perspectives and jumping around between time periods. I really love that such a complicated, strong, and uncompromising woman gets to take centre stage in a story that is both political (poll tax riots, miners’ strikes, Brexit) and personal.

The novel is set in modern Scotland and the wider UK, and the author paints a “state-of-the-nation” portrait of Scotland and its people. Sometimes disturbing and blunt, always with a sly joke and a smirk, this is an unflinching story about a woman struggling to find her place in a society that doesn’t fully get her. We see her struggle through an amazing life, never fully realizing how much she is loved.