Retired GP’s debut novel coming to Bloody Scotland
A Scots writer, who has written a 1960s set novel, is to read from it as a Crime Spotlight Author at Bloody Scotland this year.
Written by Anne Pettigrew, Not The Life Imagined is published by non-profit Glasgow publisher Ringwood and was runner-up in the SAW Constable Silver Stag Award 2018.
Author Simon Brett, 2014 CWA Diamond Dagger winner and judge of the Constable Silver Stag Award, said of Not The Life Imagined: ‘There have been many books written about the world of medicine, but Anne Pettigrew brings a fresh voice and moral authority to the subject. Well-written and lively.’
Glasgow born Anne (68) was a Greenock GP for 31 years and light-hearted columnist for The Herald and medical press.
A Glasgow graduate (1974), she also has an Anthropology Masters from Oxford (2004). Finding no literature about modern women doctors, she wrote Not the Life Imagined aided by Creative Writing tuition at Glasgow University.
A winner of several short story prizes, Not The Life Imagined is her debut novel. The book will benefit Plan UK to promote girls’ education world-wide. Five-star reviewed on Amazon, Not The Life Imagined has been submitted for the Saltire Award.
Anne is thrilled to be chosen as a Spotlight Author for Blood Scotland 2019 in Stirling on 22 September, appearing with Forensic Professor Angela Gallop author of When The Dogs Don’t Bark.
Anne now blogs on bookish topics on her own website and the new innovative Literary Globe which aims to bring together authors, readers, booksellers and publishers world-wide.
Not The Life Imagined tells the story of narrator medical student Beth, who wryly charts sixties Glasgow medical students through changing, and at times stormy, relationships over two decades of stressful career jostling with a backdrop of contemporary events (Free Love, The Ibrox Disaster) and scientific advances (Dundee pioneered DNA forensics, HIV emergence).
Scenes of medical and personal noir are interspersed with humour. A Ten-Year reunion is a watershed: devastating crimes past and present are exposed. Beth’s quest to uncover the boy responsible for her friend’s suicide is fulfilled, but is justice served?
Relevant to present-day narratives concerning mental health and gender equality, this award-winning novel depicts a time when sexism was the norm, #MeToo unthinkable, mobiles hadn’t been invented, computers filled an entire room and research entailed library skills, not Google.
