Reviews of Graham's novels

 

 

Saigon Tea

 

Danny Canyon, bound and bleeding in a darkened room, is reliving his 40-odd years, which began in a Glasgow slum and appear about to end in a Saigon one. What has brought him there running a bar after meeting his beautiful refugee wife Mai while working in a Melbourne smallgoods factory is a disposition for trouble. But en route from Scotland are his brother Frankie and mate Jimmy, to help deal with the sinister local "businessmen" demanding money from Danny. Despite subjects like marathon drinking, standover thuggery, urgent sex, random violence and pet budgies that are deep-fried, this novel has a strangely innocent ring to it. Maybe it's the mellow Scottish accents bubbling throughout the prose. Or the genuine affection between the two brothers. Incidentally, Reilly writes an excellent description of the intimacies of sausage manufacture, probably the best I've ever read.
Debra Adelaide - Sydney Morning Herald

His characters' conversations are realistic, amusing and telling, and he captures the feel of Glasgow, Melbourne and Saigon superbly.
Good Reading

Saigon Tea is one of those books that people tell you is funny, and it lives up to its recommendation. The writing is refreshing, funny and clever. The story is full of life, humour, passion and violence.
Queensland Times

Reilly writes with an insider's knowledge and the result is provocatively funny.
Sunday Times

For the sheer joy of a good laugh, then Saigon Tea is hard to beat.
West Australian

Reilly's writing about physical setting is superb, whether it is the grey opacity of Glasgow or the sexually charged bar in Saigon. Funny, moving and often tender, Saigon Tea is a book which bears out the truth that hardship is no barrier to laughter.
Canberra Times

The wonder of the writing here is its profound infectiousness and deep love of hometown dialogue. Saigon Tea is positively more-ish.
Barry Dickins - Big Issue

11:9 is the fiction imprint of Neil Wilson Publishing, a Glasgow-based company that also publishes outdoors, drink and humour titles. The list started with lottery funding through the Scottish Arts Council; that money has come to an end, but 11:9 still brings out some fiction, including this sparky comic debut, acquired from Hodder Headline's Australian subsidiary.
Graham Reilly, an expatriate Scots journalist based in Australia, occasionally falls into the temptation that traps many comic debutants, to underline the jokes. But when he allows his sardonic tone to speak for itself, he's a natural. He has a natural warmth, too, as well as a relaxed prose style and a gift for dialogue; and he evokes well his principal settings, Glasgow and Saigon. His plot concerns the rescue mission of Frankie Canyon from Glasgow to Saigon, where his brother Danny is in trouble with a local crime boss. But the main pleasure of Saigon Tea comes from the incidentals, such as the scene in which Frankie gets a phone call imploring him to come in aid of his sister, who, drunkenly throwing up out of her window, has propelled her false teeth into a neighbour's garden.
Nicholas Clee - The Guardian