| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Oh, What a Night!,
By
This review is from: 1982, Janine (Canongate Classics) (Paperback)
This inventive novel takes place over one difficult night in the life of Jock McLeish, security systems engineer: a night which brings him to the brink of suicide. It is an evocative mosaic, mingling the sadistic fantasies that fail to distract Jock from the bitter memories of his own life - poor decisions, casual cruelties, ill-judged liaisons - and his musings on the failings of his beloved Scotland. Eventually, a kind of resolution is reached.It is all done in Gray's fluent and adventurous style. Fans of his other works should not hesitate; newcomers to his dark, Gothic fictions could happily(?) start here.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Scotland, bleak and sad,
By A Customer
This review is from: 1982, Janine (Paperback)
Gray's great second book is much better than the famous Lanark; though quite similar in some of its themes it is tighter, funnier and works more effectively. It concerns an aging security operative, desperately lonely and alcoholic, who is reviewing his life in a small Scottish hotel room. Without spoiling the book for anyone (I hope), he "finds himself" when, despairing at all the missed chances in his life he tries to kill himself and enters a dialogue with God. As an atheist this surprises him! A beautiful vignette of what it is to be Scottish, politically and sexually repressed. Replete with pretend literary notes like Lanark (one of several references to Flann O'Brien which Gray acknowledges), this is by far the better book. Sad though.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the Great C20th Scottish novels...,
This review is from: 1982, Janine (Hardcover)
...up there with Sunset Song, in my humble opinion (and I should say that the latter, read when I was 14, was the novel for me which made fiction seemt he greatest thing in the world). Far better than Lanark - tighter, more humane, funnier and more serious. A wonder.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
|