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Doug Johnstone - The Ossians (penguin Books)
Doug Johnstone will perform at The Big Chill festival 2008 A-Z line up | Ticket infoDoug Johnstone - Biography
Doug Johnstone is a writer and freelance journalist, based in Edinburgh. He has a PhD in experimental nuclear physics and spent four years designing radar and missile guidance systems for planes and helicopters. He is also a singer, song-writer and instrumentalist in a band, Northern Alliance, which has released two albums to critical acclaim and minimal sales. Tombstoning is his first novel and The Ossians his second.
The Ossians - Synopsis
A rollicking and hugely enjoyable contemporary novel describing the outrageous mid-winter tour around Scotland of a group of musicians called 'The Ossians'. The band's driving force is twenty-four-year-old lead singer, Connor - intelligent but self-destructive, pretentious but charismatic, gloriously opinionated and with an extraordinary ability to get beaten up.
The band is on the verge of signing a major record deal before setting off on a two-week tour of the cities and hinterland of Scotland, a tour expected to culminate triumphantly in a defining Glasgow gig. On their travels there is a seagull massacre, hapless drug deals, a mysterious stalker, a radioactive beach, a bomb-testing range, an epileptic fit, a town full of riotous Russian submariners, deadly snowstorms, epiphanies, regular beatings and random shootings.
The Ossians is both hilariously readable and satirically astute, a story of rock'n'roll obsession as well as a search for identity and a sense of community, written with delicious insight, pace and brio.
www.penguin.co.uk
Doug Johnstone will perform at The Big Chill festival 2008 A-Z line up | Ticket info
Written: 16th Apr, 08
Read: 430 times
