The Second Cut
by Louise Welsh
Canongate
Louise Welsh has lived in Glasgow most of her life. Her debut novel The Cutting Room was twenty years ago when she was angry about the open and institutional hostility towards LGBTQI+ people during the Keep the Clause campaign.
The central character of her seductive novel, openly queer Glaswegian auctioneer Rilke, inhabited the darker parts of a city hidden from tourists. Twenty years later, antihero Rilke still walks in the shadowy margins and uncovers buried secrets. Although there have been huge changes in the city and in society generally, prejudice and violence still exist and there is no place for complacency.
When Rilke’s old friend Jojo is found dead in a backstreet doorway, police write it off as the result of multiple bad lifestyle choices. Rilke had been the last person seen with him when they left the wedding of two gay friends to have a quiet chat after Jojo had become increasingly raucous.
Rilke had embraced his inner freak a long time ago, alongside his boss, the chain-smoking Rose who had an on-off relationship with the local constabulary in the form of James Anderson who went to school with Rilke … just to make things more complicated.
Covid has impacted on the financial bottom line of Bowery Auctions and making an honest living was getting more difficult. Rilke follows up a tip Jojo gave him about a house in Galloway that needed clearing in a hurry, but is not happy to accept that Jojo’s death was accidental, especially after he finds boxes of glass vials in his friend’s flat.
Rilke views the world around him with dark humour and, although he is willing to put two fingers up to society as a whole, he has the urge to look out for certain people and get mixed up in things that are far too dangerous. Jojo’s legacy is drawing him into contact with highly questionable, and he sees how young men’s appetites for life were close to being death wishes as they take risks to walk on the dark side.
Lezly Herbert
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