Bitter Fruit
Out now
In this much-anticipated sequel to Modernist Dreams Brutalist Nightmares, LG Thomson's personal story plays out against a background of Mutually Assured Destruction, acid rain, industrial unrest, and UK unemployment hitting an all-time high. Set in 1980s Scotland (with cameos from London) and featuring tales of sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, hippies and punks, nightmares and masks, dreams and hopes, Bitter Fruit is a frank and darkly funny read about enduring the bleakest of times. The book includes a playlist along with contemporary photographs and sketches by the author.
Modernist Dreams Brutalist Nightmares
Out now
A searingly honest and brutally funny account of being part of the first generation to grow up in Scotland's most ambitious New Town... at a time when trousers were flared, sexism was the norm, and the beating of school children was industrialised. But with mass strike action, the three-day week, and the shift from the old imperial monetary system to decimalisation, it was also a time of great unrest and change. Set against the social landscape of the time is Thomson's personal story - the trauma of sexual abuse and coming to terms with being an outsider.
Live Literature
LG Thomson is available for readings, workshops and talks. She has extensive experience of running creative writing workshops with the emphasis on creative and is listed on the Scottish Book Trust Author Directory. If you are a school, library, community group or not-for-profit organisation based in Scotland and would like to commission LG for an event you can apply for partial funding via the Live Literature programme.
LG Thomson
Author | Artist
LG Thomson uses writing and art to explore the ways in which the past echoes around us and how life leaves its marks upon us. She is fascinated by the push-pull tension of the internal conflict and the struggle between dark and light. Her work is essentially about the absurdity, joy and pain of existence.
LG was born in Glasgow. Home was a single room tenement flat with a communal toilet until her family moved to Cumbernauld, a social experiment billed as The Town for Tomorrow. She left home at 17 to attend art school in Dundee. Four tumultuous years later she graduated into a grim landscape of mass unemployment. A heady mix of life on the dole, artist’s residencies and waitressing followed before she gained employment as an illustrator and graphic designer. She went on to specialise in poster campaigns for issues as varied as HIV and AIDS awareness, football hooliganism, and knife crime. When she began writing her first novel pressures of time meant that her own art fell by the wayside. After a hiatus lasting more than two decades art exploded back into her life.
She now lives in Ullapool, a small fishing village on the north west coast of Scotland lying on the same latitude as Lost Cove Alaska. She is the author of seven novels, including Boyle’s Law, a noir thriller set in the Highlands. Her writing has appeared in a wide range of anthologies and literary publications including Wyldblood Magazine, Epoch Press, and the Urban Pigs Hunger anthology. Her latest books are narrative memoirs set in 1970s and 1980s Scotland.
Modernist Dreams Brutalist Nightmares is a searingly honest and brutally funny account of LG's experience of being part of the first generation to grow up in Scotland's most ambitious and experimental New Town, billed as The Town for Tomorrow.
In Bitter Fruit, the much-anticipated sequel to Modernist Dreams Brutalist Nightmares, LG's personal story plays out against a background of Mutually Assured Destruction, acid rain, industrial unrest, and UK unemployment hitting an all-time high. Set in 1980s Scotland (with cameos from London) and featuring tales of sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, hippies and punks, nightmares and masks, dreams and hopes, Bitter Fruit is a frank and darkly funny read about enduring the bleakest of times.
Modernist Dreams Brutalist Nightmares and Bitter Fruit are published by Outcast Press.
