This section includes reviews of Rodge’s first novel, No Fireworks, details of the prizes it was nominated for, and a selection of interviews with Rodge from around the time of release. Some of the pieces are available in full here, some are links to other sites where the interviews can be found…

Sunday Herald
Misc. Reviews
Saltire First Book Award
Faber website interview
How I became an Author

Review of No Fireworks
Sunday Herald
by Colin Waters, 30 July, 2006.

"Some people don’t know when to give it a rest. Look at Evelyn Stone. She nagged her son Abe to kill her all the way through a long illness. He refused. Even when she dies, there is no peace for the unfortunate Abe, and it seems she’s still sending him complaining letters from beyond the grave. Now this self-loatihng history teacher is sunk beneath a number of ailment, the worst of which is his drink problem. When his own son, Nathan, and granddaughter, Lucille, move in with him, it only seems to worsen his plight. Nathan is bitter; his wife has left him and he counter-intuitively blames his Dad instead of his own inability to master his gambling problem (the irony is that Nathan is a psychiatrist). Step by step, matter get worse for the Stones in a quietly tragic-comic way. Even Lucille, a beacon of sense in comparison with her elders, manages to get herself expelled when she stabs another pupil in the hand.

Rodge Glass’s debut piles on the misery yet never feels emotionally dank or wearing. With a light touch he explores sick old Abe’s worst malady – his family – the only one for which there is no cure."

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Reviews of No Fireworks:

“No Fireworks is both thoughtful and brave, offering a bleakly humorous and moving take on one man’s struggle to restore his faith – in himself, his family and ultimately, his God.”
The Times Literary Supplement

“A superb debut novel…Like the best tragic-comedies, it is written with a pin-sharp sense of character, isn’t afraid to take swings at the deepest subjects and can spin between the two modes at will.”
The Scotsman

“A fine debut novel”
The Herald

“Rodge Glass is a very good comic writer”
The Independent on Sunday

“A wonderful debut by a writer we will certainly be hearing more from. Touching, funny and compelling.”
Louise Welsh, author of The Cutting Room

“An impressive achievement…Charming and idiosyncratic, it is literary fiction reminiscent of Zadie Smith or Hanif Kureishi in its exploration of characters who are intriguing without exactly being likeable.”
City Life

“Glass has jumped on the Jewish bandwagon…even your houseplants will work out what happens at the end.”
The Daily Telegraph

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No Fireworks Shortlisted for Saltire First Book Award 2005

Thanks to all who sent messages of support before, during and after the Saltire Society Awards Ceremony on 30th November, for which Rodge actually ironed a shirt. No Fireworks was short listed for the First Book Award, which was eventually won by John Aberdein’s novel Amande’s Bed, released by new Scottish fiction imprint of Argyle Publishing, Thirsty Books. You can read Ali Smith’s glowing review of it in The Guardian, click here. The Book of the Year Award went to Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories. An interview and discussion of this book can be found on The Daily Telegraph site, click here to read more.

First Book Award shortlist:

John Aberdein, Amande's Bed, Thirsty Books
Leanda De Lisle, After Elizabeth: How King James of Scots won the Crown of England in 1603, Harper Collins
Jenny Erdal, Ghosting, Canongate
Alison Flett, Whit Lassyz Ur Inty, Thirsty Books
Rodge Glass, No Fireworks, Faber and Faber
Wendy Moore, The Knife Man: The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery, Bantam Press

Book of the Year Award shortlist:

Kate Atkinson, Case Histories, Doubleday
Michel Faber, The Fahrenheit Twins, Canongate
Clare Harman, Robert Louis Stevenson, Harper Collins
David Harrower, Blackbird, Faber and Faber
Martainn Mac an t-saoir, Gymnippers Diciadain, Ur Sgeul
James Meek, The People's Act of Love, Canongate
Barry Menikoff, Narrating Scotland: The Imagination of Robert Louis Stevenson, South Carolina Press
Ali Smith, The Accidental, Hamish Hamilton

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Faber website interview, 13/06/05

No Fireworks is described as a story about 'eight extraordinary days in the life of an ordinary man who can no longer put off answering the big questions'. Could you sum up briefly what these big questions are, and say more about the themes contained within the book.

Most debut novels have a strong autobiographical element to them, and often contain a thinly disguised version of the author somewhere in the story. I wanted to be cleverer than most debut authors but wasn't sure if I was able, so I made my protagonist, Abe Stone, a fast-forwarded worst case scenario of my own life if it all went horribly wrong, in the hope that this would fool readers into thinking it wasn't really all about me. Abe meant to do a great deal with his time on earth, but never quite got round to it; my greatest fear was being like him, and at times when I was writing this book, that seemed an all-too-possible future for me. As for the major themes of the book - Judaism, Christianity, Israel, Abe's search into his family history - these all just seemed to suit him. It made sense he should have rejected his religion but not quite know why, not understand his family though he wants to, and be subject to the whims of controlling dead people. Abe is weak because I don't want to be - but he's trying, in these eight days at least - and that's something. Also, I think all great books are about a search of some kind, and I wanted to get as close to that as I was able: to understand yourself you need to understand the world you were born into, and that's what Abe is attempting to do. In his own, bumbling way.

Apart from Abe, your two main characters are a dead 93-year-old woman and her stubborn 14-year-old great-granddaughter, who make up two generations of a very dysfunctional family. Where did your characters come from - are they based on anyone you know?

Lucille, the grand-daughter, is not taken from anyone in particular. She came out of my experiences of a number of strong children in disintegrating families - strong not because they were born that way, or enjoy it - but because they had to be. I went to several different types of schools, and met a lot of these types of children; though they may not speak much, they are often the strongest. Lucille is surrounded by childish adults, and she goes to a school where asking questions is frowned upon, so she defends herself the only way she knows how, through a stubborn strength of character. But despite all her problems she is a strong young woman. Lucille is the book's real hero. She puts up with more than anyone else and knows her own mind - that's more than can be said for anyone else. I have no idea where Evelyn came from - a nightmare, probably! Most of my characters are not composites or versions of me (with the exception of Abe) - they are imaginary people who form very slowly over time in my mind. Though I have indulged myself with Abe, I think it's lazy to get all your characters from people you know. For me, great fiction is about the marriage of experience and imagination - I love to write because I get to use my imagination, which I felt stifled in all the jobs I did and most of the schools I went to. My work is about the whole, not the individuals. So I don't steal characters from off the street.

You don't say exactly where No Fireworks is set - is that deliberate?

At the beginning I set the book nowhere out of pure cowardice - I didn't want to admit I was writing about where I came from. I said it was set in the north of England and that seemed enough. But now I have different reasons for keeping it ambiguous - Abe's journey is not about where he is geographically, and the really important thing is that the book is set in England, in a village or small town that feels unremarkable to the reader. The rest doesn't matter, and more description would get in the way of the story. But every piece of fiction has to be judged on what's important to what you want to achieve in that particular thing; my next book has a very specific, real geographical location that is essential to the aura and plot.

You are originally from Cheshire but are now settled in Scotland. How do you find being a writer based in Scotland?

I love it - I moved away for a while, missed it and came back to Glasgow, where I've lived mainly since 1997. Every city has its ugly places, but Glasgow has many parks, a beautiful old University, a West End with lots of little independent shops, impressive architecture and a lot of culture within a small space, which makes it as close to what I want from the outside world as I can get without personally ripping all the McDonalds out of the high street. Also, there is a really positive, supportive group of writers here that I haven't as yet come across anywhere else. Writers are in touch with each other, help each other, socialise - most of the time, writing is such a solitary thing. You have no office to go into on a Monday morning, no community. So being part of something is really important. Scotland is a relatively small place with a high proportion of artists, poets, writers, playwrights - here, I don't feel like an alien life form for doing what I do. I come across people all the time who consider it perfectly normal!

How useful did you find the Creative Writing course at Glasgow University?

That course was essential to my development, because it made me believe I could. The mistake some critics make with these kinds of courses is thinking they are just sausage factories of fiction, leaving nothing worthwhile behind. I can't speak for others, but on the Glasgow course, this is not true. I was taught to find my own voice and use it. It is a good training scheme for writers. A course that has nurtured talents like Louise Welsh, Anne Donovan, Rachel Seiffert and Will Napier in only ten years of existence is doing something extraordinary. Each of these voices is different and is proof the only thing they were interested in at Glasgow University was quality. In my case, it was through getting the opportunity to be taught by Scotland's best (James Kelman, Janice Galloway, Alasdair Gray) and watching the development of the newer writers like the ones I mention above that I came to believe I could be the next in line, if I worked hard enough.

What other writers - past and present - do you most admire? Are there any that you feel have particularly influenced you?

The Scottish author, playwright, poet and artist Alasdair Gray has been a big influence on me, as he was my tutor at University and I now work for him, assisting him in practical ways with his books, seeing how he works at close quarters. Also, I am now writing a biography of his life and work. So every moment I have spent with Alasdair has influenced me in some way, whether I wanted it to or not. Aside from that, and the contemporary Scottish fiction I have already described, mainly by women, I love the books of people like Roth, DeLillo, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Orwell and Huxley. It's an old story, but I've still not read anything better than 1984. But there are a lot of good novels out there - I just bought another book by Amelie Nothomb today, the third this year, and I've read very few better writers than her in my life. She's incredible. Everything good is an inspiration; everything bad helps me recognise things in my own work I need to eradicate - so I find most books, even bad ones, useful in some way.

What do you most enjoy about being a novelist?

Being a novelist is everything I ever wanted to be. I enjoy everything about it, even the most difficult parts. But writing the final page of No Fireworks, the only part of that whole book that slipped out painlessly, was one of the most enjoyable things I've ever done.

As a reviewer yourself (for The Herald), how important do you think reviews - good or bad - actually are?

Ask me in a few months time! I don't know about that one yet, as I haven't been influenced by praise or criticism, but I'm sure I'll have clearer idea soon. As for the books I review, I never know what effect they have in the outside world - very little, probably. I just work out whether I think the world is better or worse off for having the book in front of me in it, then say why I think what I think, as honestly as I can.

What are you working on now? There's the biography of Alasdair Gray, but is there also more fiction in the pipeline?

Yes, as well as the book on Alasdair Gray which will take several years (I'm only in the research stage now) there's more fiction on the way. Since finishing No Fireworks, I have been working on a second novel about two young people who meet for the first time in Prague after a yearlong Internet relationship. They have both seen enough of the world to know they want nothing to do with it, so lock themselves in a single room and promise never to come out. At the moment I'm calling it Hope for Newborns. There's also the very beginning of another novel that arrived in my head without permission, but I'm trying to pretend that's not there until I've finished book two.

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How I became an Author
by Rodge Glass

A week ago I finished editing my debut novel. Then I did what any self-respecting young member of Scotland's intelligentsia-in-waiting would do to mark such an achievement - I went out to get very, very drunk. After nearly three years of writing, rewriting, making it better, making it worse, adding bits, taking them away, then going back and doing it all again, I'd almost forgotten I might ever actually finish. Also, as with anything seemingly too good to be true, there's always that chance your agent, or publisher, or the prankster God of Literature is playing a practical joke and it could all be taken away at any minute. Thankfully, not so. The hangover has now gone, and it's all still happening.

Although I had wanted to write seriously for years, I actually fell into it by accident. I was struggling through a dissertation I didn't want to do when the Creative Writing Fellow at Strathclyde University saw some of my fiction and quietly suggested I ditch my ill-advised opus on the early lyrics of the Manic Street Preachers in favour of a collection of short stories instead. I didn't need much persuading. Until then I didn't think it was realistic to do anything practical with my writing - for the last few years I had been busy playing the toilet circuit of Glasgow's rock venues with little joy, and didn't really feel like starting another career that had virtually no chance of succeeding. But once I began writing more and realised I could be good at it, I wanted nothing else. Any small possibility of a sensible career was finally, and happily, abandoned for good.

My dissertation became my first collection, I Directed the Traffic for Fun, and was good enough to get me on a well-respected course for writers at Glasgow University, which I took part-time over two years and paid for by working as a bookseller, spending little time pushing the latest 3 for 2 offer and plenty imagining what my book would look like at Number One in place of the latest Beckham biography or whatever rubbish I was stacking that week. The Glasgow course was the main turning point because it showed me what was possible, and without it, I'm certain I would still be rearranging displays in bookshops instead of looking forward to signing copies of my book in them.

I began what became my novel before I really knew what writing was. This meant having to re-do even the most basic things. I was still learning the trade, so getting a decent first chapter took nearly eighteen months, though it all came relatively quickly after that. Overall, I probably wrote enough for three or four books, though most of the rejected material was more like the quality of the books I was stacking that the one I wanted to put my name to. Meanwhile, I began shouting about myself, giving readings of my short stories, writing off to anyone I thought could help me, applying for grants and soaking up practical advice on how to get noticed from anyone in the business I came into contact with. I learnt quickly. Someone once called me a "self-advertiser", thinking it was an insult, but I had come to pride myself on being one.

The old clichés dictate that to be any good you must suffer horribly, write 5,000 words a night while swigging from a cheap bottle of whisky, die, or simply wait for cult status to come knocking. I disagree: in order to learn, you must engage with others crazy enough to want to write stories for a living. Like with any other profession, we writers benefit from seeing the work of others, loving it, hating it, discussing the details of it until we've forgotten what we started arguing about. This sense of community on the course was crucially important to my development. Learning from great authors (I was lucky enough to count James Kelman, Janice Galloway and Alasdair Gray among my tutors), and following the success of past students who had gone on to publish made me feel like I could be next in line to succeed if I wanted it enough. I wanted artistic and commercial success. I still do. The quality of the fiction is up to me, but if I have something important to say, why only say it to a few people?

Once I'd finished the course the real work started. I had two degrees, more debt than I cared to think about and little chance of any proper job apart from the usual call-centre nonsense this government calls "Graduate Employment". I had no option but to get on with it or give up, so I wrote to three agents with the first 10,000 words of my novel in the hope of one biting, though I was nowhere near ready. Luckily, Jenny Brown Associates agreed to take me on and receive the novel in increments. Then, just as the pennies ran out I was lucky enough to receive £2000 from the Arts Council that I'd applied for the year before, but only succeeded in getting on second attempt in summer 2003. The Arts Council money lasted nearly four months, but I still wasn't finished - literature does not pay much attention to what bills need to be paid. There were many more months of work ahead. I moved back to Manchester where I grew up, to write until the thing was done.

Once I'd finished the 1st draft, my agent wrote to six publishers and all of a sudden everything changed. Now, three months later, the book is finished, scheduled for release next July with Faber & Faber, one of the worlds best respected publishers; I have a deal that understands what both my bank manager and I need. I have gone from having nothing to having everything I ever wanted: an identity, a purpose, a novel to call mine, even a half-decent pay cheque. I'm glad I stuck it out.

The Bar:

GET OUT THERE. If you want to be published, you have to let the world know who you are. All you need is a decent search engine, a copy of the Writer's Yearbook, a bit of fire in your belly and the willingness to approach strangers in positions of power. If you're any good, you WILL find success, but only if you go chasing it.

IDENTITY IS EVERYTHING. When people ask what you do, say "I am a writer." Until you think of yourself as one, no-one else will.

BELIEVE IN YOURSELF. Only one novel out of every 2000 finished is published, and only a fraction of them find publishers that will pay the writer fairly and promote the book well, so you're always fighting the odds. If you don't think you're good enough, you're finished before you've even started.

READ. It's not possible to be truly great writer without being a good reader. Devour everything you can.

DON'T LET THE BASTARDS GRIND YOU DOWN. Fiction, by its very nature, is subjective. Not everyone you come across can like what you do: one man's George Orwell is another man's Jeffrey Archer. Let your critics spur you on - or else, they will eat you up.

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