No Fireworks
Hope for Newborns
Alasdair Gray: A Secretary's Biography

Scheduled events for 2008:

MAY 2nd
READING THE LEAVES, at TCHAI OVNA West End, Glasgow, alongside Robin Cairns, Bashabi Fraser, Suzanne Egerton and Christie Williamson.

JUNE 5th
HOPE FOR NEWBORNS launch at Sauchiehall Street Waterstone’s, Glasgow
6.30pm till 8pm, then on to The Universal on Sauchiehall Lane for party after. FREE ENTRY.

JUNE 11th
HOPE FOR NEWBORNS launch at Deansgate Waterstone’s, Manchester
from 6.30pm till 8pm, with drinks nearby afterwards TBA. FREE ENTRY.

AUGUST 16th
EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL
Details TBA

TBA soon – launch for Alasdair Gray: A Secretary’s Biography

No Fireworks

No Fireworks is the story of eight days in the life of Abe Stone, a 61-year-old, three times divorced history teacher and alcoholic. Left reeling by the death of his acid-tongued mother Evelyn, who hasn't let being dead stop her from controlling him, Abe starts to realise he has done nothing with his life.  Afraid his time might also be up soon, Abe goes in search of his true identity with help from his friend Henry and super-intelligent grand-daughter Lucille. No Fireworks is an upside-down, inside-out voyage of discovery novel, a fiery warning about the consequences of inaction and life unlived.

This novel was originally released by Faber and Faber in July 2005 in trade paperback format, then again in August 2006 in paperback. It was nominated for the Saltire First Book Award (Scotland), The Dylan Thomas Prize for Fiction (Worldwide), The Authors’ Club First Novel Award (UK) and The Glen Dimplex First Book Award (Ireland).  It won none of these.  Press for the book was generally positive where it was reviewed, though a majority of this was in Scotland, despite the author being English. The Times Literary Supplement called No Fireworks “thoughtful and brave”, The Independent on Sunday called Rodge “a very good comic writer” and The Scotsman called the book “a superb debut”, but The Daily Telegraph disagreed, accusing the author of “jumping on the Jewish bandwagon”.

Download extracts in PDF format:

• Her Final Power
• Nayborough Grammer

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Hope for Newborns

After serving in the army, Lewis’s grandfather founded the Victory Barber Shop in
Manchester as a tribute to all things Great and British. But three generations later the shop is being attacked by anti-war protestors and Lewis isn’t sure which side he’s on any more. He spends half his time trying to save his broken family and the other half trying to escape it: his walls are full of glamorous places he wants to go, and his head full of dreams of adventures he’d like to have.
So when he receives an invitation from a woman called Christy to join the charity Hope for Newborns, ‘designed to help you repair your own damaged life and the lives of others', he finds it impossible to resist.
Soon he’s keeping secrets, breaking the law, and imagining something much bigger than escape…Hope for Newborns is full of comedy and sadness and the complications of
modern life without faith – a warm and funny love story about two young people who’ve
seen enough of the world to know they want more from it than it wants to give.

 

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Alasdair Gray: A Secretary's Biography

Rodge’s personal biography of the Scottish author and artist Alasdair Gray comes out on September 8th 2008 in hardback and will appear sometime in Autumn 2009 in paperback. Below: a Note About Subject and Biographer and how this book came to be, the Bloomsbury blurb taken from the Introduction to the book, and ‘Bring Out Your Skeletons’, a piece Rodge wrote for The Scotsman newspaper in 2006, appealing for interviewees.

Alasdair Gray, writer and painter, is now 73. He has always intended to write his autobiography, and sometimes still talks about it, but Gray is a busy man with a full diary. When this book was begun in early 2005 he was working on several projects: a political pamphlet called How We Should Rule Ourselves due in time for the spring election of that year, a book on his artwork called A Life in Pictures due to be finished by the end of 2005 (later delayed), and a novel which became Old Men in Love (released October 2007). He was also engaged on the biggest commission of his life, the mural at the Oran Mor Arts Centre, initially supposed to take until 2008/9 – now likely to take longer. Already the victim of one heart attack, Gray cheerfully suggested he may not survive to write the book of his life and rather liked the idea of Glass taking on the job, with his co-operation (but not control), before he went “ga-ga” (his expression) – on the condition that should he get round to it himself one day, he should have the power to re-use direct quotations from his own writing and conversation. This was granted.

Rodge Glass, 30, is now a novelist (No Fireworks, 2005, Hope for Newborns, 2008)) but wasn’t when he first encountered Gray in a Glasgow pub in 1998. Since then, while pursuing his own writing ambitions, he has filled many roles in the life of the writer/artist. For several years he took dictation whenever and wherever asked: whether Gray was in bed, in hospital or drinking soup cold from the can he was there with a pad or a laptop, awaiting instructions. Over the last ten years he has also been barman, tutee, secretary, signature forger, driver, researcher, advisor, chief technology negotiator, tea-maker and paperboy, with varying degrees of success. In this book Glass attempts one more role – biographer.

 

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