In 'This Road Is Red', Alison Irvine does for Glasgow what Irvine Welsh has done for Edinburgh - imagining a city through its fringes, fearlessly and without frills. In fact, 'This Road Is Red' goes one better than 'Trainspotting' by bringing to life a whole scheme in the sky, not through the interconnected tales of a handful of individuals, but by opening a hundred windows onto a whole community across two generations, so that the reader can hear a town talking on every page. Her book is publicised as a novel but plays with the conventions of non-fiction, including what appear to be direct testimonials of people who first lived in the flats when they were erected in 1964, to those at the end. It s a combination that works well... - THE HERALD
It sounds odd to talk of a book providing an obituary for a housing scheme, but in many ways that is exactly what This Road is Red is doing: and in the process helping record a way of life that is about to disappear. - UNDISCOVERED SCOTLAND
This is a beautifully written tale of life in a high-rise housing scheme . . . Alison Irvine's first book is a fine tribute to the people of the Red Road and a great account of how human solidarity can prevail in even the bleakest circumstances. - THE SOCIALIST REVIEW - WILLY MALEY
Irvine's stories are by turns sad, frightening, moving, dark, occasionally wickedly funny and always compelling. -The Morning Star
