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Ullapool author’s new memoir sequel about “navigating life and coming to terms with past trauma”





LG Thomson and her new book, Bitter Fruit.
LG Thomson and her new book, Bitter Fruit.

Ullapool author LG Thomson has published a sequel to her memoir about “coming to terms with the trauma of her past”.

Writer and artist LG Thomson published her memoir Modernist Dreams Brutalist Nightmares in 2022, when she opened up out about the sexual abuse she experienced during her childhood growing up in 1970s Cumbernauld, Glasgow.

The book ends with her acceptance into art school, which is where Bitter Fruit begins.

LG studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD) and graduated in 1985.

Thirty-eight years later, her daughter MK Thomson would graduate from the same art school, leading to the mother and daughter artistic duo having a joint exhibition earlier this year.

LG Thomson with her new book, Bitter Fruit, in the Ceilidh Place Bookshop in Ullapool. Picture: LG Thomson.
LG Thomson with her new book, Bitter Fruit, in the Ceilidh Place Bookshop in Ullapool. Picture: LG Thomson.

Bitter Fruit is the story of a young woman coming to terms with the trauma of her past while negotiating the bleak realities of the present.

Told in Thomson’s unique voice, Bitter Fruit chronicles her life as a working-class student in a middle-class art school world.

After graduating into a bleak landscape of mass unemployment, she navigates her way through life on the dole, finding and losing religion, and a series of mind-numbing jobs, while trying to hold on to hope for the future.

Illustrated with contemporary photographs and sketches by the author and set mainly in Scotland, with locations including Dundee, Cumbernauld, Glasgow, and Oban, Bitter Fruit has been described as “a frank and darkly funny read”.

LG will also be hosting a launch party for the book in Ullapool’s The Ceilidh Place on July 4 at 7pm, alongside local artist Eleanor White who will be hosting discussions around the new book.

The event is free to attend, and non-ticketed.


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