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|  | | Ferry Tales
In this collection of short stories, Brendan Gisby has yet again shown his flair and talent for story-telling. “Ferry Tales” takes its title from South Queensferry, which sits on the Southern shore of the River Forth in Scotland and which is referred to by the locals as The Ferry. The stories all evolve around the Author’s family whilst he was growing up in the Ferry in that frugal aftermath of war during the 1950’s and early l960’s.
Whilst they reflect the austerity of that period, the stories also contain insight into the backbone of the people during that time. Sprinkled with humour, they make not only an entertaining read, but also provide a sometimes somewhat humbling experience.
Superbly written, as is to be expected from this writer, each story reaches out to the reader in a way which touches and moves. They are so well narrated that their colourful characters appear to come alive on the pages. The fact that they oftimes re-appear in totally different stories, thereby familiarising the reader with th | |  | | The Bookie's Runner
Brendan Gisby has written this utterly beautiful novella to honour the short life of his father, a man of seemingly little significance. The story is narrated with haunting subtlety, rhythm and depth of feeling by his teenage son as he takes a bus ride back to school for the first day of a new term where he will have to announce his father's sudden death and deal with the resultant reactions.
Bob Dylan wrote the classic song 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door' and thereby unforgettably marked the passing of an otherwise insignificant character in the movie 'Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid'.br />
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Brendan Gisby has written this utterly beautiful novella to honour the short life of his father, a man of seemingly as little significance.br />
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The story is narrated with haunting subtlety, rhythm and depth of feeling by his teenage son as he takes a bus ride back to school for the first day of a new term where he will have to announce his father's sudden death and deal with | |  | | The Island of Whispers
It's ‘Watership Down' with a difference. The difference is that there are no cuddly rabbits. Just rats. They live on the little island that's tucked under the Forth Railway Bridge. They've been there for centuries. Then a group of them attempts to flee to the mainland. They just happen to go in the middle of the bridge's centenary celebrations...
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span style="font-family: Arial">font color="#000000">Set on a rocky islet lying in the shadow of the world-famous Forth Railway Bridge in Scotland, this superbly written tale centres on the creatures who inhabit it – a huge colony of rats who have made their home beneath the crumbling ruins of the monastery. But ‘home’ is hardly the word for the native black creatures living under the cruel dictatorship of the larger brown rats who took over the colony when they first arrived in their masses | |  | | The Olive Branch
Back in 1975, there were reports in the press of a warming in relations between the Republic of China and the USSR. Called ‘The Olive Branch’, to signify the metaphorical token of peace that was exchanged between Peking and the Kremlin, and set a few years in the future, this novel relates what might have happened if the two Communist giants combined and colluded to dominate the world.
p class="bodytext" align="justify">I was in my mid-twenties at the time of the press reports, and I was further right than Attila the Hun. Rather naively, I wanted to write a novel that would act as a warning of the threat to the West that such an amelioration in relations could pose.
p class="bodytext" align="justify">When I revisited the manuscript more than thirty years later, I was more than pleasantly surprised. I realised that I was reading a thriller and not the dense political diatribe that I thought I had written. By the time I reached the end of it, I was delighted and exhilar |
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