Prepare for more of that inimitable Keenan narrative voodoo brilliance. In Xstabeth it'll give you a special and magickal alchemy of metaphysics, singer-songwriters and golf, angelic entities, memory and grace. What a thrill to take this remarkable trip to St Andrews and Russia, in the arms of music and synchronicity - Wendy ErskineI sometimes think David Keenan dreams aloud. His prose has the effortless, enigmatic , unsettling quality of dream. In Xstabeth , as with For the Good Times , the narrative shuttles between episodes of nearness and chasm . Reading it feels like being cut open to the accompanying sound of ecstatic musicThis book spoke, it said "read me" from the very first sentence as if it were alive, it gave me visceral joyA delicious, dark and haunting book, from the first page I couldn't let it go and I know Xstabeth will stay with me for ever. The book contains magic and intrigue. It is a 21st century cult classicIt is one of the most interesting novels I've come across this year.

Reading it, I felt the unmistakable pulse of something living, and it isn't done with me yet - Literary Review The prose has a mesmeric quality . Xstabeth reprises the manic idealism of This is Memorial Device (2017), Keenan's exuberant debut novel about the post-punk scene in 1980s Airdrie. Tomasz, a disciple of Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake, cuts a brooding but sympathetic figure - Spectator.