The Cutting Room

Reviews / Votes

One of the most intriguing, assured and unputdownable debuts to come out of Scotland in recent years . . . A stunning work of fiction * * Sunday Times * * A remarkable first novel * * New York Times * * I was hooked from page one. Rilke is not Welsh's only great creation. The huge supporting cast of misfits and outsiders . . . are equally memorable. And Glasgow becomes a character in itself: it is oppressive, foreboding - a dark place for a dark tale * * Guardian * * Astonishingly this is a first novel, catapulting Welsh straight into the superstar league, while establishing Rilke as a true original * * The Times * * Welsh upturns tropes and adds depth, seedy detail and Gothic lyricism to the page-turner framework * * Telegraph * * The Cutting Room fixes itself among a formidable modern pantheon that includes the novels of Ian McEwan and A.L. Kennedy * * LA Times Book Review * * This elegiac, elegant and atmospheric book is an original and compelling first novel. Rarely can such Gothic material have been treated with such subtlety * * Daily Telegraph * * Welsh's prose can flit from clipped and short to elegant and graceful . . . As taut a thriller as you'll get; full of unexpected alliances, double crosses and a brutal denouement worthy of classic American hard-boiled fiction * * Big Issue * * Welsh succeeds in making Glasgow her own * * Observer * * An astonishingly accomplished debut, this is always in my top ten books of any genre . . . Welsh brilliantly draws a gothic Glasgow of despair and decay as she lays bare the depths of human deviance * * Guardian, Top 10 Scottish crime novels * *