Ten Scottish novels which would make great movies.
To mark the start of the Glasgow Film Festival, which runs from 18 February to 1 March, here are ten terrific novels crying to make the transition from page to screen
1 Something Leather, by Alasdair Gray
Who cares about Fifty Shades of Grey when you can have even more multiple shades of Alasdair Gray? Concerning the love-lives of June, Senga and Donalda, Something Leather "starts near the end, has ten earlier starts, a crisis, a catastrophe and a moral". What more could you ask?
2 The Girls of Slender Means, by Muriel Spark
It's wartime in London and a group of girls are living in the May of Teck Club, some of them in a world of their own while others are borderline mad. When an unexploded bomb is found the club must be evacuated but are all the girls slender enough to escape through a narrow space?
3 Laidlaw, by William McIlvanney
Rumoured to have been the model for Taggart, Laidlaw is ripe for translation to the big screen with its cerebral detective who is made from girders and its grimy Glasgow setting.
4 A Case of Knives, by Candia McWilliam
McWilliam's debut novel features a heart surgeon who is obsessed with a young estate agent. Meanwhile, his best friend is called Anne Cowdenbeath, perhaps the first time the town's name has been so used. For those who like their thrillers deep chilled.
5 The Deadman's Pedal, by Alan Warner
We're in the 1970s and 16-year-old Simon Crimmons is growing up in the Highlands and bored witless. Salvation of a sort comes in the form of a posh bloke, his über gorgeous sister, and the railway. In contrast to Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting, there are trains here aplenty.
6 The Return of John Macnab, by Andrew Greig
Taking his cue from John Buchan's 1925 yarn, John Macnab, Greig updates the situation but follows the original's plot faithfully, though he does add to the cast of the three bored huntin', shootin', fishin' types a hard-living female journalist with an untidy past.
7 The Summer of Drowning, by John Burnside
Twentysomething painter Angelika Rossdal moves with her daughter Liv to the Arctic Circle where she can find peace to think about her life and in particular the summer when two boys drowned in mysterious circumstances. Would be wonderful filmed in black and white.
8 Redgauntlet, by Sir Walter Scott
In the summer of 1765 Darsie Latimer sets out to discover the secrets of his parentage on a journey to the wilds of Dumfriesshire but is soon kidnapped by the eponymous Redgauntlet and drawn into a plot to restore the Stuarts to the British thrown. Tip top.
9 Sick Heart River, by John Buchan
Buchan kept his best novel until last. Told he is dying, Sir Edward Leithen, MP and Advocate General, heads for the frozen wastes of the Canadian Arctic.
10 Foreign Parts, by Janice Galloway
Two woman take a holiday driving through France. Rona and Cassie are chalk and cheese or, as the blurb would have it, Virgil and Dante. Described as "a novel of travel kettles, sweeties and sandwiches", it may not sound like the stuff to whet Oscar's appetites but you never know.
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