Naming the Bones - Softcover

Louise Welsh is the bestselling author of The Cutting Room, Tamburlaine Must Die and The Bullet Trick. She was chosen as one of Britain's Best First Novelists of 2002 by the Guardian. Her awards include the Crime Writers' Association Creasey Dagger and the Saltire First Book Award. She lives in Glasgow.

University of Glasgow English professor Murray Watson has attained the year-long sabbatical he always wanted, during which he can write a biography of little-known poet Archie Lunan, who died three decades before in a sailing accident. But as he doggedly researches Archie and learns little, he comes to realize that his own life is also amounting to very little. Hes estranged from his only family, his brother. Hes spending too much time in Glasgows dingiest pubs. Rachel, his department chairs wife, has ended their affair. And Archie, beyond being a manic drunk, remains a cipher. So Murray travels to Lismore, the island where Archie met his end. There, he finds some answers, at least about Archies brief life. Three-fourths of the book is an insightful send-up of academia and professors who discover their work isnt a substitute for a life. Characters are vividly drawn, Welshs portrait of a shabby Glasgow pub is exquisite, and her Lismore is wonderfully bleak and forbidding. The concluding lurch into Gothic horror, however, seems at odds with the rest of the book. --Thomas Gaughan