Patient X: The Case-Book of Ryunosuke Akutagawa

David Peace

When Yorkshire-born David Peace returned to his home county after 17 years of living in Tokyo, he did not hang around for long. Best known as the author of The Damned Utd, which feverishly charts the late Brian Clough’s tormented tenure at Leeds United in 1974, Peace’s most passionate works tend to betray his deeper love for Japan. He returned there after only two years back in England and Patient X – a dark imagining of the strange, short life of writer Ryunosuke Akutagawa – completes his Tokyo Trilogy. The journey of Akutagawa, after whom Japan’s leading literary award is named, is presented in a surreal, haunting style, delivering a novel that is revealing.

6/10

The Anstruther Lass, £7.99, Black and White Publishing

Vivien Carmichael

In 1865 Dundee’s jute mills were booming and a common workplace for young women and children. We meet Lana St Claire, a young widow, as she makes the decision to move from her wee home in Anstruther to the big, bold city of Dundee, to become one of the jute girls.

She quickly makes friends at the mill and even finds herself caught up in a romance with a Dutch sailor named Stefan, to whom she gets engaged, with plans to begin a new life with him in Rotterdam.

Little does Lana know that many people are out to destroy her and her new fiance and when Stefan disappears one weekend, leaving Lana alone and confused with a baby on the way, she is left to make some devastating decisions. Has he left her because he’s afraid of having a child or is there something more sinister going on? With the rise in killings by the infamous Dundee Slasher, who targets young sailors, Lana can only presume the worst.

Vivien Carmichael provides a traditional Scottish romance story filled with passion, jealousy and heartbreak. Although the story was full of mystery and emotion, I found the writing rather basic, which made it hard to feel completely absorbed in the book. The story seemed to get lost and did not give the climactic ending I’d expected.

By Rachel Scorgie