Ewan Morrison's Blog
June 7, 2013
reviews – tales from the mall
FINALIST IN THE 2012 SALTIRE SOCIETY BOOK OF THE YEAR
WINNER OF THE 2012 NOT THE BOOKER PRIZE
FINALIST IN THE 2012 CREATIVE SCOTLAND AWARDS
WINNER OF THE 2012 GLENFIDDICH SPIRIT OF SCOTLAND
WRITER OFTHE YEAR AWARD
“One of the most innovative and groundbreaking books published in the last couple of decades. Mixing disciplines and drifting between fiction and fact, Ewan Morrison deconstructs the stultifying Venus fly-trap of the society and culture we’ve constructed under consumer capitalism.” -Irvine Welsh, author of ‘Trainspotting’, ‘Skagboys’.
“Morrison continues Ballard’s tradition of locating menace beneath the sleekness and shine of postindustrial life. You also learn a lot along the way. A truly interesting book.”-Douglas Coupland, author of ‘Generation X’
“Tales From the Mall is a great book. It’s touching and emotional and part of a new form of literary storytelling. It’s worth reading, worth loving.” -James Frey, author of ‘A Million Little Pieces’
“Tales From The Mall is an elegy as much as it is a philippic…Morrison is easily the most interesting Scottish writer of his generation.” Stuart Kelly. The Guardian.
“A wonderful and important book that does the most difficult thing: laying bare the overlooked everyday world in which we live. The dark dreams and lightweight fantasies of shopping malls and those within them are exposed with incredible acuity and great tenderness.” -Catherine O’Flynn, Costa prize winning author of ‘What Was Lost’
“Gruesomely funny, uncomfortably accurate, astonishingly varied…Tales From The Mall… represents and creates a nether world that is all around us, mostly ignored, hardly seen, incessantly frequented.”- Jonathan Meades, Author, Broadcaster
“Welcome to a new kind of 21st-century storytelling. This remarkable collection of writing is hard to categorise in any orthodox sense, but it is a brilliant and often profound form of literature that says more about the modern human condition than a hundred more conventional novels might. The genius of Tales from the Mall is that Morrison plays everything with a straight bat. There are pieces of writing here that will make you cry, others that will give you a warm glow about humanity, and still others that will make you despair at the state of the world.” -Scotland On Sunday
“Ewan Morrison captures beautifully the point at which anecdote becomes urban myth and reportage slides into fiction. This feels like a really important step toward a fiction of the 21st century.” -Claire Armitstead, Books Editor, The Guardian.
“Morrison has pulled together a wealth of information and anecdotes to create a vibrantly funny and genuinely scary portrait of our times.“ -The List
“I confidently predict that Ewan Morrison’s Tale From The Mall… will do for Cargo what Children of Albion Rovers did for Rebel Inc. This is a phenomenal and important groundbreaking novel maybe even the Trainspotting of its generation.” Kevin Williamson. Rebel Inc.
“The most groundbreaking and moving book to come out of Britain in years. A dazzling book about everyday people trying to find heart in a heartless place. Morrison is so far ahead of the zeitgeist it’s frightening.” Doug Johnstone, author of ‘Hit & Run’
“A definitive expedition into the alternative universe death-star environment of the mall. Sure-footed, smart and necessary. Morrison unpicks security barriers between genres, documenting his fictions, and smacking us with real-world retrievals. I was grateful for every word of it.” -Iain Sinclair, writer and filmmaker. author of ‘Ghost Milk’
“An innovative way of delivering his trademark obsessions with globalisation, consumerism and relationships, its an engaging mix of fact and fiction. The stories range from laugh out loud funny to on the button social commentary. Staffing the tales from the mall are brilliant characters, this is a book for anyone who’s ever dated, waited, worked or berated in a mall. Which is all of us.”- Scotsman
“A brilliant new book”- The Verb, Radio 3.
“Morrison glides us through people’s lives, picking up tips for creating havoc at malls, digesting facts and stats, dipping into the loneliness at the heart of consumerism. The effect is, like a mall, mostly dazzling. Morrison is always ready to find disquiet and unease in the most banal of places. His book is populated by small lives in the shadow of the multi-national, delivered in a sympathetic manner …His writing remains fresh and inventive.” -The Independent
“… Morrison has produced something really special with Tales from the Mall, even in its decidedly analog, “dead tree” format. In one sense, this collection of “fictions, facts and confessions from the secret world of retail” is actually rather old-fashioned in its Reithian intent to “educate, inform and entertain” (in that order). It’s to Morrison’s credit that he has created an engrossing book which will change, to just a small degree, how you will look at the next mall you enter.”- Paul Cockburn. Northwords Now.
“On top of Morrison’s brilliantly written tales you also get these facts and ‘true life tales’. I was fascinated throughout. ‘Tales from the Mall’ is a quirky and rather unusual read but all the better for it. The way that fiction, facts and real people’s real stories retold merge creates this wonderful mix of the real and surreal and captures humans and the way that they behave. I haven’t encountered a book that does this in quite this way before. It’s fascinating, funny (often darkly) and at times really affecting. I am really glad that people pushed me in the direction of Ewan Morrison, now I am hopefully going to be pushing him on you.”- Simon Savidge – Savidge Reads
“One of the real successes of the book is that its mood and tone continually shifts, from a sense of wonder at, say, a mall’s naming conventions, to slightly bleaker, almost Dickensian visions of working life”.- The National
“A rich mix of fact, fiction, urban myth and haunting graphics, Tales from the Mall explores the centreless space at the heart of our culture and finds revised revenge, a parent’s worst nightmare, bargain hunting as a violent competitor sport. By turns clever, funny and moving, this is the un-missable retail experience.”- Dilys Rose.
“…I focus on a piece of work, Tales From The Mall, by Glasgow-based writer Ewan Morrison, which was published this year by Scotland’s innovative Cargo Press. In the simplistic nature of market classification, this book is hard to tritely define (and therefore stock). Not only does it not fit the genre-dominated fiction boxes into which everything must increasingly be shoehorned, (again, retail-, not publishing- or artist-led), but it’s not a fictional novel, short story collection, multi-media experience, or a treatise on modern architecture, consumer capitalism, authority structures and the negation of democracy, yet it’s all of these things.
Tales From The Mall, therefore, has gained little exposure, other than a fantastic word-of-mouth through the cognoscenti. This publication posits an exciting future for storytelling, from the so-called margins. It’s an innovative book that is set largely in Scotland, but which has a global reach, as this small country interfaces with a globalised consumerist culture to produce truly zeitgeist writing.”
Irvine Welsh , Keynote Speech. International Writers Conference. Edinburgh International Book Festival 2012.
Reviews – Close Your Eyes
“A brave, sensitive, painful novel, Close Your Eyes is an alternative history of the last forty years, an exploration of the damage idealistic parents can do to their children and a reminder that it is sometimes the peolpe who are absent who really fill out lives.”
JAMES ROBERTSON, award of And The Land Lay Still.
‘Beautiful. Haunting. If Ewan Morrison was a woman, Close Your Eyes would be destined for the Orange Prize shortlist.’
HELEN WALSH, author of BRASS.
”An insightful tale of a brave new world revisited.” THE SUNDAY TIMES
”Morrison inhabits his female characters with impressive skill, and his sharp portrayal of the commune’s evolution from hippy enclave to capitalist self-help business makes what is a potentially depressing novel a riveting read.” THE OBSERVER
“The whole of Close Your Eyes is an admirable and intimate wrestling with the damages incurred by trying to heal, as Adorno once called modernity, “a damaged life….a wise, emotionally literate gauge of the burdens – and blarney – of alternative living should buy it immediately.” Pat Kane. THE INDEPENDENT.
“Morrison’s most accomplished book yet….a complex, thought-provoking and deeply ambitious book, and one that Morrison, now an exceedingly versatile writer, pulls off triumphantly.”
MALCOLM FORBES, THE HERALD. FULL REVIEW
‘Mesmerising. Disturbing. Outstanding. Written with exquisite emotional perception, this is a tour de force from Morrison – the kind of book which comes along rarely but lingers in the mind long after the last page is turned.’
DAILY RECORD
”Close Your Eyes is by far his most accomplished novel, an intense account of a girl’s upbringing in a Scottish Highland commune…Switching between two timelines, this is both a lyrical account of motherhood and an astute piece of commentary on the ways in which our society and our families have changed irrevocably over the last 40 years. To Pack all that stuff into a deeply personal tale that keeps you turning the pages is a testament to Morrison’s skill as a writer. Few Male writers manage to tap into the emotional well as deeply as Morrison does, yet he has a clearer eye for the bigger picture and the writerly craft at his disposal to deliver a piercing critique of the world we live in. Morally complex, emotionally resonant – Close Your Eyes is a fine, fine piece of work.
THE BIG ISSUE. Doug Johnstone.
”One of the successes of the book is Morrison’s convincing use of a female narrator. He writes about breastfeeding and motherhood in a completely natural way and the reader forgets the author is male. Yet Rowan is not just a woman, she is everyman, anyone who has struggled with depression, disappointment, abandonment and disillusion. Close Your Eyes is yet another step on Morrison’s journey to understand what makes society tick and take a close look at what happens when people do close their eyes. Highlights include the page-turning pleasure of a well-turned plot, Morrison’s skilful crafting of character and dialogue and his confident handling of stylistic techniques. There is betrayal, passion, idealism and defeat, the triumphs of human behaviour as well as its petty, craven failures as his utopia loses its ideals in order to survive. Ultimately, there is hope, however, as Rowan comes to terms with her past and reconnects with both her mother’s memory and her own child, and the reader is left to conclude that ultimately, a mother’s love conquers all.”
THE SCOTSMAN.
‘Morrison is unsparing in the emotional ordeal he inflicts on both his protagonist and the reader, but his novel is always acutely and convincingly observed. It’s a telling and powerful study of the intersection between the political and personal.’
METRO. 4 stars
“Often the sense of impending disaster makes you sick with nervous tension. At other times, Morrison creates calm from the most unlikely circumstances. In a book that is somewhere between Esther Freud’s Hideous Kinky and Jez Butterworth’s play Jerusalem, Morrison creates something both uncomfortable and beautiful to read”.
Welovethisbook.com FULL REVIEW
‘A rivetting Well told tale.”
Brian Agee. THE SKINNY. 4 stars.
“Ewan Morrison has had a good year. His last book delighted the critics and the omens for his new novel, loosely based on his childhood growing up with hippie parents, are looking equally good.
For a while, he says, he felt he was being pigeonholed as someone who only wrote about sex, and certainly the three novels that made his name – Swing, Distance and Ménage – had a whiff of scandal about them.
But in May, in Tales From The Mall, he struck out in a new direction, mixing up fiction with reportage, journalism and sociology in an innovative look at consumer culture. And in his new novel, Close Your Eyes, he is playing with form again: in a novel that takes a hard look about the realities and consequences of Highland hippiedom, the narrative encompasses song lyrics, New Age slang, and parenting manuals.” JANET CHRISTY. THE SCOTSMAN
“Often the sense of impending disaster makes you sick with nervous tension. At other times, Morrison creates calm from the most unlikely circumstances. In a book that is somewhere between Esther Freud’s Hideous Kinky and Jez Butterworth’s play Jerusalem, Morrison creates something both uncomfortable and beautiful to read”.
WE LOVE THIS BOOK
http://www.welovethisbook.com/reviews...
“Morrison’s most accomplished book yet….a complex, thought-provoking and deeply ambitious book, and one that Morrison, now an exceedingly versatile writer, pulls off triumphantly.”
MALCOLM FORBES, THE HERALD
August 24, 2011
The end of Books? Or tips on how to survive.
'ipad over a sea of Fog' Caspar David Friedrich 1865.
The Guardian ran with my speech from the Edinburgh Book Festival on the subject of The End of Books The event was with Claire Armitstead and Ray Ryan this week). I am very pleased to find that some blog contributors have submitted detailed advice for how authors might survive in the digital era.
Otherwise I’m alarmed to find that a great number of the comments come from people who:
(a) have no problem with the fact that author advances have been slashed by 80%
(b) have no issue with consuming free digital products in other formats
(c) think that books will somehow be spared the trend towards zero price that is happening in other digital media
There are also many book sniffers locking horns with
digital fetishists but sanity is generally prevailing
Join the debate here: END OF BOOKS
February 1, 2010
menage – reviews
Stuart Kelly Scotland on Sunday 5th July.
‘Ewan Morrison has swiftly established himself as the foremost chronicler of the more perplexing and unconventional contemporary relationships… Ménage is an accomplished, often poignant, novel. …the novel strives to go beyond corrosive irony and world-weary cynicism to recapture a sense of the possibilities of love.’
Matt Thorne. The independent.
‘The link between art and madness is a tired theme, but Morrison makes it fresh by rooting his story in such a richly realised vision of the early nineties… It is a mark of Morrison’s considerable talent that his exploration remains fascinating, and that watching his characters’ fantasies (and sanity) crumble is just as interesting third time round as it’s ever been before.’
Doug Johnstone. Scotsman. 3rd July.
‘A shrewd and insightful look at a complex love triangle… Frightening, funny, perceptive, emotional and honest, Ménage is an excellent piece of work from a clearly gifted writer.
Alan Bissett. Author Death of a Ladies Man.
‘Menage is a triumph. The density of the psychological relationships; the connections between art, love and madness; the cleverness of the structure, the sheer believability of these screwed up, solipsistic people. The weight of it. A huge, brave feat.’
LA Martinson. The Erotic Review.
[Menage] is an attempt to see how we can keep desire alive in daily life; how we can negotiate a pathway between sexual desire and emotional intimacy. An attempt to ask how important sex is and what we’re willing to risk for it. And, more importantly, what we’d be left with if we risked nothing at all.
Sunday Herald – summer reads
A fast-paced, poignant tale about the arrogance of youth and insane, all-consuming love.
Alan Brown. Sunday Times Ecosse. 5th July
‘A good read but it does come across at time a bit like Jackie Collins for Guardian Readers ….Personally I find that his work, menage in particular, can make one feel ancient and suburban.’
Waterstones, Edinburgh.
Menage is a gripping read .. a steamy exploration of regret, sexual tension and a whole truckload of juicys tuff. Buy this and see what all the fuss is about. Ewan Morrison is one of Scotland’s – and Britain’s finest authors. ’
August 12, 2008
Reviews – Distance
DISTANCE – Ewan’s second Novel – the story of a long distance relationship – was released on June 29th (Jonathan Cape)
The Times ****
“A writer of serious intent and prodigious talent…In lesser hands, the besotted dialogues and communications between Tom and Meg might begin to grate, but here the author makes them utterly compelling… On this form, Morrison is one of the finest novelists around”
The Sunday Telegraph ****
Top 50 Summer reads 2008.
The List. Camilla Pia ****
“Incredibly compelling reading…. an often overpowering, whirlwind romance peppered with hilarious, snappily rendered critiques… bittersweet anecdotes and, perhaps most interestingly, some searing attacks on and celebrations of modern Scotland. Morrison keeps the reader’s spirits up and gripped to every chapter with an abundance of witty lines, bittersweet anecdotes and an underlying sense of hope, which keeps Distance from becoming too sinister.”
Doug Johnstone, author, Tombstoning and The Ossians
“Distance is a remarkable, penetrating look at the nature of love, the psychology of sex and the role of delusion and fantasy in relationships.”
Arena
“The absorption of two lovers can make the reader feel like a gooseberry… Morrison leaves you aching for their reunion.”
The Daily Mirror
“A transatlantic romance is brilliantly stretched to breaking point… Secrets and lies mount on two continents, as a face-to-face confrontation inevitably looms.”
Independent: Jonathan Gibbs
“Morrison seems on the button with the mundane routines of long-distance love.”
Financial Times, Melissa McClements
“Morrison can be insightful…This, together with philosophical musings about the nature of affection, bring weight to bear”
Scotsman
“The much anticipated follow-up to Swung, takes off in a rush, a headlong dash, a slipstream of heat with the force of irresistible suction. Giddy, off-kilter and wholly absorbing, it features two lovers, besotted, reeking of lust and loss, in the wake of a week of powerful sexual-cum-psychological intrigues in New York City and beyond.”
June 19, 2008
Reviews
‘ A writer of serious intent and prodigious talent. It’s not easy to write about passionate love, but Morrison is completely convincing in that respect. In lesser hands, the besotted dialogues and communications between Tom and Meg might begin to grate, but here the author makes them utterly compelling. Despite the pair constantly looking backwards to their week together, there is a relentless forward momentum to Distance, Morrison creating an insatiable desire to find out what happens when they finally meet up again. Morrison handles all this brilliantly, and his perfectly judged denouement is a blow to the head and heart. On this form, Morrison is one of the finest novelists around.’
The Times 28th June 2008
To read the entire review click below:
‘incredibly compelling …an often overpowering, whirlwind romance peppered with hilarious, snappily rendered critiques of [the lovers] hometowns and, perhaps most interestingly, some searing attacks on and celebrations of modern Scotland….even when all seems to be unravelling for his protagonists, Morrison keeps the reader???s spirits up and gripped to every chapter with an abundance of witty lines, bittersweet anecdotes and an underlying sense of hope.’
The List
see the full review here:
http://www.list.co.uk/article/9131-ewan-morrison-distance/
‘Distance is a remarkable, penetrating look at the nature of love, the psychology of sex and the role of delusion and fantasy in relationships. Heartbreaking in its depiction of self-destruction and desperation, it is an unflinching look at the train wreck that is the modern world. Swung was an amazing debut, Distance is considerably better, and Morrison is infuriatingly talented.’
Doug Johnstone. Author The Ossians
‘Morrison can be insightful, particularly when it comes to Tom???s self-defeatism. He also has a knowing awareness of the clichéd nature of his romantic theme. This, together with philosophical musings about the nature of affection bring weight to bear.’
Financial Times
‘The absorption of two lovers can make the reader feel like a gooseberry…Morrison leaves you aching for their reunion.’
Arena magazine
February 1, 2008
Guardian Articles plus more
So it turns out that I’ve written quite a few articles for the Guardian in the last few years. You can read them all HERE. they include why Teen Dystopias preach Market Capitalism, Scottish literature and its relation to BPD, my Top Ten commune books, How 50 Shades came into existence, whether the job known as “author” will survive in the digital era and what the world of literature will look like in 2042 (I have time travelled).
The end of Books? Or tips on how to survive.
Posted on August 24, 2011 by Ewan Morrison
‘ipad over a sea of Fog’ Caspar David Friedrich 1865.
The Guardian ran with my speech from the Edinburgh Book Festival on the subject of The End of Books The event was with Claire Armitstead and Ray Ryan this week). I am very pleased to find that some blog contributors have submitted detailed advice for how authors might survive in the digital era.
Otherwise I’m alarmed to find that a great number of the comments come from people who:
(a) have no problem with the fact that author advances have been slashed by 80%
(b) have no issue with consuming free digital products in other formats
(c) think that books will somehow be spared the trend towards zero price that is happening in other digital media
There are also many book sniffers locking horns with
digital fetishists but sanity is generally prevailing
Join the debate here: END OF BOOKS
Update from Ewan: February 2008
PRIZE NOMINATION – LE PRINCE MAURICE
SWUNG has been long listed for the bi-annual literary prize known as Le Prince Maurice. On the longlist of nine authors are included, James Meek, Ali Smith, Jim Croce and Scarlett Thomas. The winner of the award gets to spend a month in Le Prince Maurice 5 star Hotel in Mauritius. The prize is given to the best ‘love story’ or ‘story of the heart.’
For more got to: http://www.princemaurice.com/press/pressrelease/CLPMPrize08Shortlist.pdf
ITALIAN IMPRINT OF SWUNG
On Feb 28th Swung comes out in Italy with the publishers Fazi Editore.
Keep an eye out for an essay by Ewan on Love in La Republica. and also a Q&A appearing in the forthcoming edition of italian womens magazine ‘Anna.’
April 2, 2007
Swung: Articles & Stories
GUARDIAN 21 April 2007 – Review by IRVINE WELSH
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2061343,00.html
ARTICLES: WEEK – 7th to 14th April
THE SCOTSMAN. Saturday 7th April. Scottish Exclusive – cover story. Article on Ewan Morrison and swinging in Scotland. Lee Randal.
www.scotsman.com
http://living.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=515012007
THE SUNDAY HERALD. Sunday 8th April. SULTAN OF SWING, Profile on Ewan Morrison. Peter Ross.
www.sundayherald.com
http://www.sundayherald.com/life/peop...
Interviews also appeared in THE BIG ISSUE and THE LIST
THE INDEPENDENT. 31st March 2007. Cover story. Diary of a swinger – The inside story of Britains Secret Sexual Revolution.
WELL SWUNG – ‘While working on a novel about swingers the acclaimed author Ewan Morrison spent a year exploring Britains secret Sexual Subculture. Twelve Months and many, many partners later, this is what he learned.
To read the article go to:
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2405037.ece
ARENA MAGAZINE. MAY 2007. The controversy Issue. Sex stories by Britain’s hottest authors. p.162. HEAVEN – short story.
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