James Yorkston

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James Yorkston is one of the most celebrated artists in British contemporary music. Over the course of a 15-year career as a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, he’s recorded a series of acclaimed albums showcasing a balance of folk and contemporary roots, often drawing deeply on traditional songs and narrative heritage. As a popular live performer and an in-demand collaborator, James has toured continuously throughout the UK, the continent and North America, gaining a loyal and dedicated following among both fans and critics.

He’s been featured twice on BBC2’s The Culture Show and has been a Musical Director for the BBC Electric Proms. James is a regular performer at festivals such as Latitude, Bestival and Green Man. His non-fiction account of life on the road, It’s Lovely to Be Here: The Touring Diaries of a Scottish Gent, was published in 2011 by Domino/Faber. His most recent album, The Cellardyke Recording and Wassailing Society, was released to great critical acclaim last year.

 

Latest publication THE BOOK OF THE GAELS - Oldcastle Books - September 2022

The Times Historical Fiction Book of the Month for September

Joseph and Paul.  Paul and Joseph.  It’s just the pair of them – two little boys are enough to fill a small world of four cold, hungry stone walls; two boys who have learned to make themselves as little as possible.  There’s barely room for their father Fraser, but he’s now more of a shadow drifting into view occasionally, and rarely before the afternoon.  Father’s less of a presence than an absence; tortured by drink and haunted by poetry.  Absence is what fills their shabby house at the end of the lane – a place where something is missing.

The boys are slowly starving and father is quickly rotting, so when a letter arrives with a summons to Dublin and the promise of publication, it offers a chink of light – the hope of rescue.  But Dublin is a long, wet and hungry way from West Cork in the mid-70s, especially when you have no money – just the clothes they stand up in, and a battered suitcase containing one clean shirt and a sheaf of flimsy typewritten pages. 

So begins an almost anti-roadtrip of flipsides and contradictions – dreams and nightmares, promises and disappointments, generosity and meanness, unconditional love and shocking neglect.

In simple, beautiful, lyrical prose, James Yorkston’s new novel takes us on that trip, as seen through the eyes of a brave and resourceful but poor and frightened child.  It tells of the emptying, paralysing pain of grief and loss, tempered only by the hope of rescue and the redemption of parental love. 

It tells the story of father, and Joseph and Paul, and The Book of the Gaels

 

Praise for THE BOOK OF THE GAELS

'James is a brilliant writer, he never fails to deliver something unique. I love this book, it's lonely, funny and reassuringly dark...' Sam Heughan

'I absolutely love this book. A brilliant evocation of a child’s view of the world. The story flows effortlessly, the poems are good and it made me laugh quite a lot too. An unsentimental and unflinching miracle of remembrance.' Jarvis Cocker 

'The pleasures of a shaggy dog story well told, of tales turning tail, drive folk musician James Yorkston’s garrulous second novel The Book of the Gaels … handled with brisk, compelling assurance, the authentic affection of the family nudges the reader through.  Yorkston’s slim, tumbledown odyssey is such a jewel.' Telegraph

‘The poems, or songs, are excellent. Beautifully crafted, they adorn the pages, slipped in like bookmarks, between the chapters of prose. Yorkston is a wordsmith, and The Book of the Gaels is proof of his skill.' Josephine Fenton, Irish Examiner

'This picaresque tale of a struggling Scottish writer and his sons en route from Cork to Dublin quietly captures artistic failure and redemption … There’s no denying that this is a novel in a minor key, and yet its rhythms and cadences are constantly evolving, drawing the reader closer. Listen out for it and you’ll even hear a note that might be described as poetic.' Observer

‘There are echoes of Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain. Fraser is weakened by booze, like Shuggie’s mother, but also by grief and hope. There is love here too and Fraser fights for the boys in his own way. The neglect of children is not easy to read, no matter how beautifully written it is. Persevere because this slim, punchy book is extraordinarily powerful.’ Antonia Senior, The Times, Book of the Month

'A moving portrait of poverty, loss and family.' i-D

'I’d happily spend more time in the company of Joseph McLeod whose enchanting voice still rings in my head, long after closing the book. Like Trainspotting’s Renton or Angela’s Ashes’ Frank, Joseph is a remarkable creation, whose testimony succeeds in bearing powerful witness to harrowing events without ever becoming mawkish or depressing … Funny and touching, The Book of the Gaels is a good story, beautifully told.' Herald

Charting the hand-to-mouth existence of a penniless poet and his two sons in 1970s Ireland, James Yorkston’s new novel is a dark and desperate odyssey.' Scotsman

 

Previous publication THREE CRAWS - Freight Books - April 2016

Early-90s London has beaten Jonny McHugh.  He’s failed as a student, and an artist, and the closest he’s ever got to a job is line-drawing cocks on spec for a biology-textbook.  He’s packing it up and limping back home to the far-east.

The far East Neuk of Fife that is, and he’s not alone in that destination.  On the same overnight coach is Mikey – as unshakeable as a bad hangover, and just as unpleasant.  All Mikey’s packing is a crappy soft-toy rescued from the bin, a big bag of speed, and some mindlessly optimistic plans.  Jonny’s intentions are even less well-formed – hooking up with childhood pal Stevie, and finding some work.  A reconnection with his roots, and the land and the soil of home – somewhere where he can once again belong – might just be the saving of him.

And so far, so good – at first. But as the days pass, something’s still not right; he can’t shake the buzzing fly of Mikey out of his orbit.  In a town like St Andrews, Mikey becomes a sort of social Tinnitus – cropping up when you least want it to, and maddeningly hard to shift.  Mikey’s money, and most of the speed, ran out a while back, but he’s showing no signs of leaving.  Stevie’s okay though – the fine fellow he always was; he’ll see Jonny right.  Something of a life might be rebuilt.  But then, well, the best-laid plans and a’ that…

Three Craws is the debut novel of James Yorkston, an artist whose music already acclaims a brilliant story-teller, and in these pages he brings those same gifts to the written word.  Shining with energy and bittersweet humour, it’s written with a poet’s ear for the language and people and cadence of this singular corner of the country, brought to life in its language, scenery, people and heart.  Imagine Sunset Song retold by John Michael McDonagh, and you’re something of the way to the place where this novel will take you.  It’s a tale of hope and tragedy and regret, and at the same time a hymn of love to the knowes and the shores, the bus-stops and potholes of the East Neuk, Three Craws is a novel of home, and the ties that bind us – indelibly, whether we like it or not – to the places of our birth.  

 

Praise for THREE CRAWS

Three Craws is assured, funny, and tragic all at once. Brilliantly captures the quirks and paradoxes of small town Scottish life.' Doug Johnstone

'James Yorkston's facility for an insidiously absorbing yarn isn't restricted to his songwriting. In THREE CRAWS, he uses it to masterful and often hilarious effect, detailing a world with which we are all (too) familiar: one which occupies the yawning chasm between the lives we desire and the lives we have to accept.' Pete Paphides

'Atmospheric, absorbing and darkly funny. Every bit as skillful as his songwriting.' Lauren Laverne

'His prose has tremendous rhythm and a rambunctious energy … delightful to read.' National

'Three Craws is subtle, insightful and occasionally very funny .. Yorkston has written a House with the Green Shutters for our times.' Scotsman