Eloquent, illuminating, and intimate, The Book of Shadows is where the profound, the poetic and the profane meet to glorious effect an hour to tell me things they know' love, God, art, sex, death, work, and the spirit, imagination and conduct of the human animal. Writing with the same mixture of high seriousness, dark humour and lyric precision that define his poetry, Don Paterson has made a book to carry everywhere and open anywhere - to brighten or darken the moment, but always to administer a jolt to the idling mind. detail. We should remember this when we see those men and women seemingly in love with their own decline'