Book description
MacNeil's novel, though drawing on Stevenson's novella, The Strange
Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, is never slavishly derivative. His
Method Actor's Guide is, in its finest glinting moments, that
"whole new thing" of which Hemingway wrote, and from first
to last an enticing read' -- Tom Adair, The Scotsman
'A phenomenally good novel ... brilliant, touching, funny and
clever' -- Roger Hutchinson, West Highland Free Press
After a bike crash in a foggy Edinburgh, troubled young actor
Robert Lewis wakes to find that life has changed for the darker. And
the weirder. He's still a deceitful egoist but now life seems to be
deceiving and manipulating him. Everything that can go wrong is going
wrong. He's losing control of his love life, his starring role in a
new adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde, and, quite possibly, his mind. A
Method Actor's Guide to Jekyll and Hyde is a dark, maniacal thriller
that explores many kinds of duality - individual, social and cultural,
and is a heartfelt tale about the search for belonging and the nature
of love and desire. It is also bloody funny.
Kevin MacNeil was born and raised on the Isle of Lewis. A poet,
novelist, aphorist, lyricist, screenwriter and playwright, his books
include Love and Zen in the Outer Hebrides (Canongate), Be Wise Be
Otherwise (Canongate), The Callanish Stoned (Theatre Hebrides) and The
Stornoway Way (Penguin). His first book won the Tivoli Europa Giovani
International Poetry Prize for best poetry collection published in
Europe by a writer under 35. The Stornoway Way was a bestseller and is
currently being optioned for a film. MacNeil was the inaugural Iain
Crichton Smith Bilingual Writing Fellow and has held further prestigious
writing residencies in Sweden (Uppsala University), Bavaria Villa
Concordia) and a number of other places, including lecturing on the
Creative Writing MSC at Edinburgh University. He often collaborates with
visual artists and musicians. The William Campbell and Kevin MacNeil
single 'Local Man Ruins Everything' (Fantastic Plastic) was Single of
the Week in The Guardian, in The List and on Steve Lamacq's radio show.
MacNeil cycled 1300km of the Danube, from source to Budapest, on a
single-speed fixed-gear track bike, for two cancer charities; the BBC
filmed a documentary about him and his bike ride which took just a dozen
cycling days.
