The book is a hardback consisting of two volumes fixed together, one featuring prose, the second a series of photographs and illustrations that chart the journey of a cow from the field through the process of slaughter, to the plate. This second volume is meant to refer to the title, knuckle end, a reference to meat, and also to the subtitle: a meaty collection. However, the illustrations do not add anything to the writing and if anything are extremely off-putting.

The collection kicks off with ‘Sidestore Indians’ by Will Napier, which features a psychopathic main character. An elderly native American and his son are harassed by him, though he gets his comeuppance in the end. Willy Maley, in the book’s introduction, describes this story as “evergreen”but in reality it has nothing new to offer, and brings to mind Oliver Stone’s ‘Natural Born Killers’ more than anything. Placed at the beginning of the book, and followed up by another two stories by male writers, there’s the impression of a cynical ordering of material that plays more on masculine writing styles. In fact the book is pretty male-dominated in general, and indulges in the usual gritty, urban, realist styles that have become associated with Scottish writing of late.

Colin Clark’s ‘Deek and the Day We Saw the Salmon Leap’ is a nicely observed story about a group of boys in borstal, written in Scots with minimal punctuation. ‘Not Much of a Talker’ by Rodge Glass appears to be from the point of view of a character in prison whose sentence is about to end, but there’s much more to it than that. This was one of the better stories.

Two stories play on biblical tales. Louise Welsh retells the story of the angel Gabriel visiting Mary with the news that she is to be the mother of God’s son. But Mary doesn’t want to know and Gabriel turns to rape. Fiona MacKellar’s The Girls of Eden, meanwhile, revisits Lilith and Eve and their respective fates. Again, God is presented as a tyrant and abuser of women. To have two stories with this theme seems a little repetitive though both stories are well written. Anne Donovan’s ‘Flesh and Blood’ is about a young woman whose baby dies of cot death. The young mother’s reaction is to steal someone else’s baby. The character’s name is Angela, which is a little too similar to the character in ‘Angelica’s Baby’ by Lynda McDonald. There, a teenage mum, Angelica, considers giving up her baby. This kind of repetition of theme and content points to a lack of thought on the part of whoever put together the anthology. If stories are too similar, it’s difficult for single voices to stand out.

Among the better stories are ‘What’s the Story?’ by George Inglis and ‘The Lucky Ones’ by Brendan McLaughlin. Stephanie Green’s poem, ‘The Parrot’ is one of the few poems in the book, but has a nice touch of rebellion to it, and is well written.

Many of the remaining stories are simply too similar in style or theme, or fail to make their mark. ‘Tea in Tashkent’ by Maureen Myant and ‘Golden Violet’ by James Porteous, are two of the more memorable ones.

On the whole, this is a collection of stories that falls within very narrow limits.

Technically, the writing in ‘The Knuckle End’ is good, but it is not always engaging or interesting. Characters often fail to leap off the page. Stories fall rather flat. There’s a lack of diversity in style and content. In some respects this is a book that looks backwards rather than forwards, and the curiously old-fashioned photographs and illustrations in the second volume add to this. There’s nothing cutting edge about the writing in this book. Gritty realism and macho antics are not signs of intelligent writing, no matter how much some writers seem to think they are. It might get a writer’s name mentioned somewhere, but that’s a fairly cynical approach to writing, and one that depends on manipulating the reader by pushing their buttons.

Perhaps one of the main problems with this book is the lack of real emotional content. All too often narratives seem to skim the surface. They explore difficult subjects like child abuse, death, relationship problems, violence, cheating and so forth, describe them, but they do so in a strangely detached way. It’s as though the characters in many of these stories are contained under a bell jar, separated from the reader by a glass wall.

‘The Knuckle End’ is a collection that anyone interested in enrolling on Glasgow University’s writing course might want to take a look at. But it fails to present the best new writing in Scotland. Polygon’s ‘North’ competition anthology offers a better range of storytelling and styles, and is a better example of what modern Scottish writers are producing.

Kara Kellar Bell is a film and media graduate from the West of Scotland, with a passion for European novels, French films, silent cinema, and Brazilian music (everything from Daniela Mercury and other pop stars through to bossa nova). As a writer, she likes to have room to move around creatively, so she’s not located in one genre. She writes realism and also stories of a more fantastic nature, usually grounded to some extent in the real world. She also takes delight in writing across the sexual spectrum, and as a bisexual, considers it important to remind people that things are not always black and white, either/or, in sexuality or in gender. For a selection of Kara’s writing on the Showcase section of this site, click here

© 2004 Laura Hird All rights reserved.