I’m glad you’ll read her/this book. There’s a startling amount of people who don’t take to her at all, so I’ll be hoping for the best.

The mix of black comedy, appetite for life and bleakness of outlook sounds peculiarly Scottish to me. Scottish humour is typically exceptionally dry, often much dryer than that of the English (who can be pretty dry themselves).

It sounds like she has a total command of her craft coupled with a distinctive voice; and that she knows what she wants to say with that voice. That’s a powerful combination.

Anyway, thanks for the review. I’ll start Kennedy with this one.

As an aside, when I read Raymond Carver I initially somehow misread it as Derek Raymond, and promptly wondered what the hell you were talking about. Apart from one name though, I can’t think of many writers further apart than Derek Raymond and Raymond Carver (whom I first bought mistaking a book of his for a short story collection by Raymond Chandler, clearly his name is one my eye tends to skip over).