> Skip to content
  • Published: 1 August 2013
  • ISBN: 9781448137442
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 320

Snake Road




The new novel from the author of The Death of Lomond Friel - winner of the Saltire First Book Award and the Scottish First Book Award

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ENCORE AWARD

Peggy Kirkpatrick has been talking about a baby called Eleanor.

But no one has heard of Eleanor, and Peggy has dementia. She gets confused and most of the time she doesn’t make any sense, except to her granddaughter, Aggie.

Determined to unravel the mystery of Peggy’s past, Aggie begins to search. But as curiosity turns to obsession, the drive for truth starts to threaten her marriage, her family, and her already fragile mind…

  • Published: 1 August 2013
  • ISBN: 9781448137442
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 320

About the author

Sue Peebles

Sue Peebles was born in Arbroath in 1955. She spent some of her childhood in Detroit before returning to Scotland, where she now lives. Since graduating in Psychology she has worked as a researcher, social worker and university teacher. Her first novel, The Death of Lomond Friel, won the Scottish First Book Award and the Saltire First Book Award, and was shortlisted for Scottish Book of the Year. Her second novel, Snake Road, has been shortlisted for the Encore Award 2014.

Also by Sue Peebles

See all

Praise for Snake Road

Wise, memorable and written with a lightsome delicacy... It is wonderfully wry and occasionally laced with despair and menace

Alan Warner, Herald

Beautiful prose and anguish conveyed throughout the text in a tender, yet irrevocably witty and sometimes self-depreciating manner…Peebles writes with an effortless empathy towards common everyday emotional and family struggles. This intergenerational journey is quite beautifully written, yet in an easy to follow and light style

Nudge

I ADORED Snake Road. Couldn't put it aside...so gentle and wise and uniquely observed. There can't be another Scottish novel, or indeed contemporary one, I will like more this year... a brilliant and beautifully written novel

Alan Warner

A deeply humane tale of memory, loss and the struggle to understand a family’s past

Metro

The "sacred geometry" of ageing and the timeless measuring out of love are what sustain this subtle, beautiful book

Guardian

A brilliantly perceptive novel of loss and love

Scotsman

Writing of this extraordinary quality and depth is only ever to be welcomed, embraced and, hopefully, suitably rewarded

Scotland on Sunday

Perceptive and humane, this is a memorable novel

Good Book Guide

A beautiful, brilliant novel destined to cement Sue's place as one of the leading lights of the Scottish literary scene

Waterstones

Brilliantly perceptive novel of loss and love

David Robinson, The Scotsman

Deeply humane tale of memory, loss and the struggle to understand a family’s past… It’s a novel of generous warmth

Ben Felsenburg, Metro Herald

I ADORED Snake Road. Couldn't put it aside...so gentle and wise and uniquely observed. There can’t be another Scottish novel, or indeed contemporary one, I will like more this year... a brilliant and beautifully written novel.

Alan Warner

Peebles' keen eye for social observation adds a comic touch to the narrative, expertly showing how black humour is used in bleak times.

Rowena McIntosh, The Skinny

Peebles writes poetic prose, capturing Aggie's imaginative character and her need to find meaning in the puzzle of circumstances she finds herself in. The insight into dementia and its impact upon a family is poignant, with Aggie desperate to recapture the history of a beloved Gran who is disappearing in front of her eyes. The novel strongly evokes the Scottish countryside, its link to the past and the secrets it keeps. The story may be a slow burner, but keep going because its gentle pace builds up to a satisfying conclusion

Penny Batchelor, We Love This Book

The recent death of Iain Banks left a gaping hole in contemporary literature, but nowhere was the loss felt more than in his native Scotland. Banks took ordinary situations and rendered them extraordinary; a talent that fellow Scot Sue Peebles, whose first novel won both the Scottish and Saltire book awards, shares in spades… The "sacred geometry" of ageing and the timeless measuring out of love are what sustain this subtle, beautiful book.

Catherine Taylor, Guardian

Writing of this extraordinary quality and depth is only ever to be welcomed, embraced and, hopefully, suitably rewarded

Lesley McDowell, Scotland on Sunday (Spectrum)