Alison Porteous

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Alison Porteous

Goodreads Author


Born
The United Kingdom
Website

Twitter

Genre

Influences
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Lewis Grassic Gibbon

Member Since
March 2014


Alison Porteous grew up in Peterhead, Glasgow and Edinburgh and since then has lived in Fife. She is a graduate of Edinburgh University where she studied history.
Alison Porteous believes passionately that when a nation forgets its own history, its real sense of identity can be easily destroyed. Destroy a nation's language and you are almost there.
All her life Porteous has been telling stories yet when it came to writing her first novel, she admits to being confused about what voice to write in. What was her real true voice, the voice that could express her unique experience of living in Scotland now?
When she thought about it long and hard, she realised it was because deep down she felt her real true voice had been stolen. Certainly the fami
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Alison Porteous Have a rest. Sometimes you just need a break. Things come when you don't force them.…moreHave a rest. Sometimes you just need a break. Things come when you don't force them.(less)
Alison Porteous The writing itself, when it's going well, is just the best feeling in the world.…moreThe writing itself, when it's going well, is just the best feeling in the world.(less)
Average rating: 5.0 · 2 ratings · 1 review · 1 distinct work
Dubhloch

it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 2014 — 3 editions
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Review of The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

The GoldfinchThe Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Rarely these days does one find a writer brave enough to confront so unflinchingly the desperateness of the human condition in the 21st century. But Donna Tartt is such a writer and it is this which raises her novel The Goldfinch to the highest level of art. The protagonist Theo Decker has been compared to Pip in Great Expectations but the reality

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Published on April 12, 2014 12:06
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
“The way of love is not / a subtle argument. / The door there is devastation. / Birds make great sky-circles / of their freedom. / How do they learn it? / They fall, and falling, / they're given wings.”
Rumi

Daniil Kharms
“There lived a redheaded man who had no eyes or ears. He didn’t have hair either, so he was called a redhead arbitrarily. He couldn’t talk because he had no mouth. He had no nose either. He didn’t even have arms or legs. He had no stomach, he had no back, he had no spine, and he had no innards at all. He didn’t have anything. So we don’t even know who we’re talking about. It’s better that we don’t talk about him any more.”
Daniil Kharms, Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings

Gabriel García Márquez
“It had to be a mad dream, one that would give her the courage she would need to discard the prejudices of a class that had not always been hers but had become hers more than anyone’s. It had to teach her to think of love as a state of grace: not the means to anything but the alpha and omega, an end in itself.”
Gabriel Garcia Marquez , Love in the Time of Cholera

Gabriel García Márquez
“Fermina, he said, I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love.”
Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
tags: love

William Faulkner
“Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.
Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.”
William Faulkner

2480 Good Readers of Scotland — 298 members — last activity Nov 20, 2017 12:30AM
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233 ¡ POETRY ! — 22604 members — last activity Dec 10, 2025 02:19PM
No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read ...more
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