I came back to this book after reading For the Good Times. I wasn't as struck with this book, possibly as I have less knowledge of the area and times it was set. Keenan's writing really does draw you into the world he creates though, so good for escapism in these strange times.

A fictional documentary of a fictional band, Memorial Device is filled with hallucinatory eyewitness accounts and interviews about small town life and the rise and fall of punk rock fame. An interesting concept and I enjoyed parts of it, but the plot did become a bit directionless through the middle.

This book has been sitting half-read on my Kindle for over a year; it's time for me to accept that I'll never finish it. I was intrigued by the concept and setting (my wife is from Airdrie, where the novel is set), and I've never read a novel about a band from a small Scottish town. But I just couldn't get past the way the female characters were written. There's a particularly disgusting part about the sexualisation of a cancerous breast that I won't even describe – it's the point that I put the book down, and for the next year every time I thought about picking the book up again I'd think of that scene and read something else instead. So – this book is good in theory, not so much in practice.

One of the most original books I've read in a long time and definitely the first book to make me wish a fictional band was real. This is the oral history of fictional arthouse band Memorial Device and the scene and crowd of friends that they sprang from in small town Aidrie, Scotland. The story of the characters teenage years and coming of age will strike a chord with anyone who had a large group of friends whose lives revolved around a music scene. Everything is about music and who has the best record collection and who can get hold of alcohol and who has parents who won't mind/care if you all hang round there for hours at a time. It's an intriguing cast of characters, many of who meet unhappy endings and their stories unfold over several chapters told by several different people. I won't pretend that its easy to keep up with who's who and whats happening when, but it doesn't really matter as the writing is so absorbing and every few paragraphs there is a turn of phrase that catches you and reels you back in again. My favourite was about the character with the large book collection who was described as using his books like weapons, and you also have to love an index which references falling into a bush while half cut. This book won't be to everyone's taste but if you love music and it was a major part of your growing up then you'll find much to love here.

I received a ARC from Netgalley in exchange for a fair review.

Airdrie is not a setting that I'm used to seeing in print. This tale of the music scene in the late 70s and early 80s paints a vivid and memorable picture of small-town hopes and dreams through the music scene of the time. The characters are instantly recognizable, no matter where you grew up and there is much to smile about - but this novel's strength is ultimately its successful blend of laughter and tears. Its tale of "Memorial Device, a mythic post-punk group that could have gone all the way were it not for the visionary excess and uncompromising bloody-minded belief that served to confirm them as underground legends.' is so unforgettable because of the 'might have been' feeling that pervades it and infuses it with a simmering sense of melancholy and almost-there-ness. If you love music and enjoy a left-field take on nostalgia and post-punk memories than this is definitely the book for you. Read it and pass it on to someone who'll love it as much as you do

I'm afraid I found this book rather tedious, and the subject matter and characters failed to interest me greatly. The setting was quite effectively realised, and some of the dialogues engaging, but on the whole, I'm afraid I didn't engage with the book.

This Is Memorial Device is a fictional documentary of a fictional band, Memorial Device, that hailed from Airdrie, a small, predominantly Catholic town in the west of Scotland.

The documentary is compiled by Ross Raymond, a wannabe journalist whose youth was greatly impacted by the local music scene. The four band members of Memorial Device were his heroes. The band was seen as the culmination of various precursor bands, and shone brightly and briefly before the members went off to pursue different directions.

Some chapters are editorial, written by Ross himself. Others are in the form of interviews or reminiscences of those who were close to the band at the time – archivists, lovers, rivals. The introduction of these chapters is not terribly well signposted, and much of the content is rambling which can lead to confusion about the relationships between the dozens of characters – never fear, there is an Appendix listing everyone who is mentioned, however briefly.

The result is a fragmentary story with little plot and absolutely no direction. There’s not even a terribly clear timeline to cling to. Instead, we have microscopic level of detail and analysis, focused on the music scene in Airdrie in the 1970s and 1980s. Occasionally there is a hint of aspiration – an interview at a record company in London – but mostly we are talking about people who are absolute legends within a circle of no more than 50 others. Their celebrity status is portrayed without question and without irony; the detail of their lives is picked over in such forensic detail because it really matters to Ross and those who were there at the time.

There are drugs, there is drink; there is deviant sex. This is not a novel for the faint hearted. But what makes it is that it is so recognisable. Those of us fortunate enough to grow up in small towns in the same time period will recognise the importance of pub bands, cafes, the local independent record shop, the local weirdo, the time Steve Sims got a pint of beer poured over him for talking to the wrong girl. The beauty is in the sincerity with which people there at the time believe in the importance of these markers, even though they appear utterly trivial and irrelevant to those who were not in exactly that point of space and time.

Memorial Device is not an easy read. At times, in truth, it is bewildering, repetitive and boring. It is written with a slavish adherence to authenticity, much as Roberto Bolaño achieved with his History of Nazi Literature in the Americas or his meticulous list of murders in 2666. And almost half the length is an index of pretty much everything that is mentioned anywhere. The reader has to marvel at the effort that would have been required to produce this despite the certainty that it would be of no value to anyone. The ultimate effect of this strange text is something that is satisfying to have read, even if the journey makes the reader wonder whether it is worth the effort.

I started reading this book and really wanted to like it but I just could not get into it so stopped reading part way through. This is very unusual for me.

If you're into the early postpunk bands that came out of the small towns around Glasgow in the early '80s - Memorial Device, Steel Teeth, Whinhall Starvers, Clarkston Parks, etc (those are the bands, not the towns) then you need to read David Keenan's This Is Memorial Device.

It's fiction, because those bands never really existed, but if you're in the mood for a well-written oral history of a scene that never exactly was, give it a shot. The characters have distinctive voices and personalities. If you liked Hard Core Logo or Wylding Hall or other books about bands that didn't quite exist but should have, or if you like distinctively Scottish writers like Irvine Welsh, Iain Banks, or James Kelman, and now I'm googling for Scottish women writers to investigate but I digress, this is well worth looking into.

Keenan evidently knows the postpunk era and its influences. There are references to Joy Division, Neu!, and plenty of other real bands, but the focus is entirely on the art-damaged unknowns of Airdrie and environs. These aren't the kinds of bands who reached any level of success; mental illness, drugs, and sheer bloodymindedness kept any of them from reaching any degree of fame. There are plenty of real, unchronicled bands like these, given how hard it was for independent bands to record music or release what they recorded back then. I don't know if this is a roman a clef to any degree or just completely fictional, but I wouldn't be surprised if some people recognize elements of themselves or their friends or their scenes here. Definitely recommended to anyone to whom any of this makes sense.