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Alan Cumming, the award-winning stage and screen actor, hosts the reality series “The Traitors,” which returns Jan. 9 on Peacock. Cumming’s latest book, co-authored by his friend and former comedy partner Forbes Masson, is “Victor & Barry’s Kelvinside Compendium.”
‘After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie’ by Jean Rhys (1931)
Rhys was one of those amazing, tragic, ahead-of-her-time women, and her life mirrored that of this novel’s main character, Julia, who is dumped by her lover. Her awful journey is a raging scream against the patriarchy and a biting critique of how women are viewed, especially by other women. Buy it here.
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‘Shuggie Bain’ by Douglas Stuart (2020)
Reading this book is an immersive experience; you come out of it shattered and changed forever. Shuggie is a queer boy growing up poor in Glasgow. The only respite from the male toxicity and squalor he endures is his mother, Agnes, a drunk siren whose messy love is a beacon. Buy it here.
‘The Trick Is To Keep Breathing’ by Janice Galloway (1989)
Galloway is one of Scotland’s finest writers, and this was her debut novel — full of pain and anguish, with an ironically named protagonist, Joy, who’s trying to find the trick to continue to live. I seem to like books about people who are falling apart, told from inside the character’s broken mind. This one is dark gold. Buy it here.
‘Christopher and His Kind’ by Christopher Isherwood (1976)
Isherwood inadvertently has had a huge impact on my life; his Berlin Stories were the basis for the musical Cabaret, which I’ve been in a few times. This fascinating book, however, is the unsanitized version of his life in Berlin at the end of the 1920s, just as Hitler was coming to prominence. Buy it here.
‘The Foghorn Echoes’ by Danny Ramadan (2022)
“Treat your thoughts like hurt children. They haven’t yet learned how to handle pain.” So says a wise ghost in this mesmerizing story that spans time and mortal space, from a war-torn childhood in Damascus to adult life in Vancouver’s gayborhood. The first chapter is gasp-inducing. Buy it here.
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‘Lanark’ by Alasdair Gray (1981)
I read this novel as a young man and it blew my mind — well, expanded it. I knew Gray in Glasgow as this bohemian type. Once I read Lanark, he became a visionary to me, making me reassess what was possible. This book is dystopian, mesmerizing, and surreal, and also incredibly Scottish. Buy it here.
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