Reviews
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'
Scotsman
It is a phenomenally good novel. It is brilliant, touching, funny and clever. It is also a sign that Kevin MacNeil is only just starting. Some of you out there can look forward to another 30 or 40 years of such quality and better. You are very lucky. We are lucky'
West Highland Free Press
A Method Actor's Guide to Jekyll and Hyde is a great book...intricate and powerful'
The Skinny
A writer with a real sense of the human condition ... Written with insight, wit and wisdom, it's a black comedy with serious things to say'
The Big Issue
For all the big ideas, clever wordplay and subtle themes, A Method Actor's Guide remains a wonderful romp of a book, a funny, irreverent and moving 21st-century look at human nature, and an intriguing rewiring of a classic'
The Herald
About the Book
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.
The Author
Kevin MacNeil
Kevin MacNeil was born and raised in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Novelist, poet, playwright, editor, aphorist and lyricist, his books include The Stornoway Way, Love and Zen in the Outer Hebrides and Be Wise Be Otherwise. He is currently working on an album with William Campbell, a new novel, a film, a play and a travelogue-memoir based on his 1,300km cycle down the Danube in September 2009 for two cancer charities. Kevin has held a number of prestigious writing residencies in Scotland and continental Europe. He is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. His awards include: the Tivoli Europa Giovani International Poetry Prize; the inaugural Iain Crichton Smith Writing Fellow; a J.B. Priestley Award; and a Millennium Quality Award.
