PositiveLondon Review of Books (UK)... Parini’s partly fictionalised memoir, Borges and Me, presents a Scotland infected and inflected by Borges as well as a Borges infected and inflected by Scotland ... Parini paints an affectionate portrait of Mackay Brown (though his use of the term ‘Celtic’ sounds odd in the context of an Orkney writer) ... Borges and Me...is a warm, sly and beguiling tribute to both writers [Mackay Brown and Borges], and to [Alastair] Reid. It contains, however, at least two telling misprints which, almost like Freudian slips, are revealing about the way the narrative functions ... If Canongate reused the original typography, this sloppiness can be blamed on Doubleday, the book’s US publisher. It is, however, an indication that even in the city where he lived, wrote and published, Walter Scott, the most globally influential of all Scottish novelists, is largely unread. In celebrating the abiding and metamorphic powers of memory, invention and narrative, Parini’s book shows that there is room for both Borges and Scott.
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