Times Literary Supplement
– Calling Home – Clare Morgan: http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/tlssearch.do?querystring=Clare+Morgan&x=0&y=0§ionId=1797&p=tls
– Book of The Year 2012 – Gabriel Josipovici: “Kirsty Gunn’s The Big Music (Faber) seems to give voice to the bleak and silent loneliness of the Scottish Highlands through meticulous adherence to the form of the highest mode of bagpipe music, the pibroch. It begins as it ends: ‘The hills only come back the same: I don’t mind, and all the flat moorland and the sky. I don’t mind, they say, and the water says it too… and the mountains’. It reminded me not of any British writer but of Faulkner. It is one of the finest novels of the past decade.”
Guardian
– Play it again, Dad… – Unknown: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/sep/22/kirsty-gunn-father-bagpipes-ceol-mor
– The Hills are Allive – Adam Thorpe: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jul/27/big-music-kirsty-gunn-review
Sunday Times
– The Big Music review -Lucy Atkins: http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/culture/books/fiction/article1078925.ece
The New Zealand Herald
– The Big Music review – David Hill: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=10820219
– Talking with Kirsty Gunn – Sophie Burton: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/viva-magazine/news/article.cfm?c_id=533&objectid=11333796
– Novel about piper surprise win at book awards – Unknown: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11115943
– NZ writer wins British book award – Unknown: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/arts-literature/news/article.cfm?c_id=18&objectid=10458779
– Poetic Licence – Peter Calder: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=3543982
The Independent
– The Big Music review – Unknown: How such a superb novel missed out on the major fiction prices of 2012 is a mystery: perhaps Gunn’s Modernist relaying of the importance of music of legacy – themes distilled in this beautifully aching story of grandfather John Sutherland marching across a highland landscape with his newborn baby granddaughter, apparently heedless of the worries of her parents – was simply too challenging a read, too complex a symphony, for judges to grapple with. The best Modernists knew how to make readers care about their characters in the midst of literary experimentation, and Gunn does exactly the same, making us care about John Sutherland even as he does something seemingly impossibly evil.
– The Big Music review – Michael Bywater: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-big-music-by-kirsty-gunn-7917732.html
The Dominion Post
– Welly writer wins book award – Fiona Thomas and Jo Moir: http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/culture/9098111/Welly-writer-wins-book-award
– Short and to the point – Jillian Allison-Aitken: http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/opinion/blogs/book-chooks/10209951/Short-and-to-the-point
Scottish Review of Books
– Interview: Kirsty Gunn – Nick Major: http://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/index.php/back-issues/2013-03-27-15-25-26/volume-nine-issue-three/563-srb-interview-kirsty-gunn
– Kirsty Gunn, Infidelities – Theresa Muñoz: http://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/index.php/editorsblog/entry/kirsty-gunn-infidelities-faber-faber-12-99
The Scotsman
– Interview: Kirsty Gunn, author of The Big Music – Susan Mansfield: http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/books/interview-kirsty-gunn-author-of-the-big-music-1-2371081
– Book Review: The Big Music, Kirsty Gunn: http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/books/book-review-the-big-music-kirsty-gunn-1-2385997