Books by Laura Hird
Hope and Other Stories
Urban tales of despair and dysfunction are Laura Hird’s trademark and she does not disappoint in Hope and Other Urban Tales.
Set in the low-rent areas of Edinburgh, Hird’s slices of reality are gritty, bleak and often darkly funny. Yet the possibility of hope, always just out of reach, unifies this collection, conveying that just as circumstances can reveal the morally obscure darkness in ‘good’ people, so can seemingly irredeemable characters harbour well-hidden pockets of humanity.
“She writes terrific, gritty humane short stories about life’s losers. She’s been called a ‘female Irvine Welsh’ but I found her more reminiscent of early Ian McEwan. She finds beauty amid the rubble of life’s crashing disappointments.”
Ian Rankin
World Rights: Canongate Books
Dear Laura: Letters from a Mother to her Daughter
When writer Laura Hird first left home to study in London her mother kept in touch with a stream of letters both deeply moving and extremely funny. June Hird - thwarted actress, insatiable reader and self-confessed, constipated romantic was her daughter’s staunchest supporter and harshest critic. Her letters are full of advice, scolding and encouragement, gossip about friends and family as well as comments on culture and current affairs, hopes for her daughter and regrets about her own life.
In the stunned space following the death of both of her parents, Laura Hird began to re-read her mother’s letters. Hearing her mother’s voice ringing from the pages she begins to examine the relationship between parents and child and confront her own feelings of guilt and grief.
World Rights: Canongate Books
Nail and Other Stories
Laura Hird’s first collection of short stories, Nail and Other Stories, delves deep into the dark and murky waters of Edinburgh’s bedsitland and suburbia. In the story ‘Tillicoultry/Anywhere’ a young housewife is reluctantly dragged into a wife-swapping scenario which is turning into a nightmare…
World Rights: Canongate Books
Born Free
Short-listed for the Orange Prize
Punchy, acerbic, sharp-witted and above-all, acutely observed, Born Free tells the story of an ordinary family who are all trying to escape from something - and each other.
The interactions between Jake, Joni, Angie and Vic reveal a hellish cocktail of adolescent and mid-life crises; the savagery of sibling rivalry; the waking nightmare of a marriage gone cold - and, naturally, the unbridgeable, infernal chasm between the generations.
It’s a story of everyday life.
“A funny, disturbing, remarkably courageous novel”
The Guardian