'Alasdair Gray's new novel, Old Men in Love, exhibits all of those faintly preposterous foibles that make him a writer more loved than prized. The bulk of the text constitutes the posthumous papers of a recondite - yet venal - retired Glaswegian schoolmaster, named John Tunnock (as in the celebrated tea cake), that have, seemingly, been edited and collated by Gray himself. 'This literary subterfuge serves to fool no one who needs fooling, yet will satisfy all who believe that the truth can be found more exactly in chance occurrences, serendipity, and the eggy scrapings from the breakfast plates of the neglected, than any crude, linear naturalism. 'Tunnock is a beguiling figure, at once feisty and fusty. His historical fictions chivvy us into Periclean Athens, Renaissance Italy and then bury our noses in the ordure of sanctity given off by charismatic Victorian religious sectaries. Excursions into geological time are placed in counterpoint to diaristic jottings describing Tunnock's own erotic misadventures and the millennial trivia of the Anthony Linton Blair Government's final five years. 'Only Gray can be fecklessly sexy as well as insidiously sagacious. Only Gray can beguile quite so limpidly. If I were a Hollywood screenwriter (which, to the best of my knowledge, I am not), I would pitch the film adaptation of Old Men in Love thus: 'Imagine Lanark meets Something Leather, with a kind of a Poor Things feel to it ' By this I mean to convey to this novel's readers that Alasdair Gray remains, first and foremost, entirely sui generis. He's the very best Alasdair Gray that we have, and we should cherish his works accordingly.' - Will Self
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`As Jonathan Coe once put it in an essay on Gray's 1982, Janine (1984), you get an immediate sense of being "in thoroughly genial if eccentric company"... There's something appealingly direct about the way his characters get to grips with political questions.' -- Christopher Tayler, Guardian
`Bloomsbury has done this handsomely, making of Tunnock's tales a gorgeous object in eye-bending blue and silver...... Gray's startling imagination fizzes throughout ... beautiful, inventive, ambitious and nuts' -- Sophie Harrison, Sunday Times
`I've always admired the style and polish of his work' -- Tibor Fischer, Financial Times
`Old Men in Love is an Escher book, a book of recursions, a perverse self-parody ... this is a beautiful book, printed in black and Saltire blue, with a silk ribbon bookmark, inlaid cover and the author's own striking illustrations' -- James Purdon, Observer
`Alasdair Gray, it seems, is unwilling to muck about with a good formula... A work of some genius... If you like Alasdair Gray, this has it all.' -- Tim Martin, Independent on Sunday
`Bloomsbury has done this handsomely, making of Tunnock's tales a gorgeous object in eye-bending blue and silver...... Gray's startling imagination fizzes throughout ... beautiful, inventive, ambitious and nuts' -- Sophie Harrison, Sunday Times
`I've always admired the style and polish of his work' -- Tibor Fischer, Financial Times
`Old Men in Love is an Escher book, a book of recursions, a perverse self-parody ... this is a beautiful book, printed in black and Saltire blue, with a silk ribbon bookmark, inlaid cover and the author's own striking illustrations' -- James Purdon, Observer
`Alasdair Gray, it seems, is unwilling to muck about with a good formula... A work of some genius... If you like Alasdair Gray, this has it all.' -- Tim Martin, Independent on Sunday
About the Author
Alasdair Gray is the author of the Whitbread and Guardian Prize-winning novel Poor Things and the story-collection Ten Tales Tall and True.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 17 people found the following review helpful
By Tom Scott
Format:Hardcover
To read Alasdair Gray, a man who interrupts his own interruptions, is a joyful nosedive into freewheeling post-modernist headspin. The only way to do it is to let go, let it happen and trust the author's bounce will keep you from smacking into the ground. Old Men in Love, how do I love that title, repays that trust. Gray has enough bounce to keep us all up in the air. Here the main character takes the biscuit. John Tunnock - and, yes, you're probably supposed to wonder if that's toilet and teacake or anything else that goes with too much tea - is a wheeze, dead in mysterious circumstances, brought to life by his diaries, a writer who failed to write three novels. Why three? Why not seven, or forty seven? There is a reason. Gray is examining himself in this novel. The three unwritten novels derive from three plays written by Gray 30 to 40 years ago, set in the Athens of Socrates, in Renaissance Florence and Victoria's Britain.
When reading Gray erroneous questions tag onto every given fact. You suspect clues or trickery or just plain playfulness as this master of verve draws you into a verbal Alice-through-the-looking-glass world where you pretty much write your own story led by the maddest hatter at that proverbial tea-party. Or at least, I do, playing constantly suspicious, because the innocuous breezy side-step will, in the end, and long after you dismissed it, turn out to be the point. Playing himself in his own novel, Gray responds to the question 'End notes or footnotes' with 'Marginal notes. I like widening my readers' range of expectations.' There we have it, wider they cannot be. Don't expect storytelling. This is philosophical meandering around topics that range from Iraq to the tug-of-war between art and commerce. A wheeze, but brilliantly done, Old Men in Love demonstrates that the only way is to let go, let it happen and trust, while hanging on for dear life. Despite all the genial eccentricity and wit, the blooming anger and growing gloom, there is a point to it - an unmissable treat of a book.
When reading Gray erroneous questions tag onto every given fact. You suspect clues or trickery or just plain playfulness as this master of verve draws you into a verbal Alice-through-the-looking-glass world where you pretty much write your own story led by the maddest hatter at that proverbial tea-party. Or at least, I do, playing constantly suspicious, because the innocuous breezy side-step will, in the end, and long after you dismissed it, turn out to be the point. Playing himself in his own novel, Gray responds to the question 'End notes or footnotes' with 'Marginal notes. I like widening my readers' range of expectations.' There we have it, wider they cannot be. Don't expect storytelling. This is philosophical meandering around topics that range from Iraq to the tug-of-war between art and commerce. A wheeze, but brilliantly done, Old Men in Love demonstrates that the only way is to let go, let it happen and trust, while hanging on for dear life. Despite all the genial eccentricity and wit, the blooming anger and growing gloom, there is a point to it - an unmissable treat of a book.
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
havent read a word yet but the presentation, dustsheet, art work, original headers, footers, chapter head doodles, paper stock quality, ribbon,occasional full & part page illustrations, font choice, all a step up from all but pricey art books. If the prose is a patch on Lanark I expect to purr.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars
2 reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Meta-fiction on the installment plan.
16 Aug 2010
By Dick Johnson
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
How many tens of thousands of us want to have written a book? Notice I did not say anything about going through all the work necessary to actually write one. John Tunnock, our stereotypical never married, ex-teacher, ex-schoolmaster hero, has made a post-retirement second career of not getting that often promised book written. But, he is working on it.
Ancient Greece seems to be the desired starting point of the unwritten book, with Socrates our main character. Since we meet Socrates late in his life, we know from our own school days that this portion of the book isn't going to last for too many pages.
Tunnock's story makes a stop in 15th century Italy to visit Brother Filippo before deeply immersing us in the story of Henry James Prince and his Agapemonites in 19th century England. We are led to believe the Prince part is a different story. We do get back to Socrates before it's too late.
Interspersed with the attempts to have written a book we are treated to the story of The Life of John Tunnock. While he was pretty much a jerk, as a jerk with money he was pretty well liked (even if he never seems to finish that book).
Compared with Gray's Lanark, it's doubtful this book will be a conversation piece at the cocktail party. I can imagine many claiming to have read Lanark but few bothering to mention Old Men in Love. To those, like me, who like to read those books that are difficult to classify (much less review), this will be enjoyable. Those who don't like to wander too far afield from books with beginnings, middles and ends, should avoid this one.
I do wonder - if a book is about the writing of a book by someone with no writing skills, is it still meta-fiction? Or is it meta-folly? Perhaps Old Men in Love qualifies as both.
Ancient Greece seems to be the desired starting point of the unwritten book, with Socrates our main character. Since we meet Socrates late in his life, we know from our own school days that this portion of the book isn't going to last for too many pages.
Tunnock's story makes a stop in 15th century Italy to visit Brother Filippo before deeply immersing us in the story of Henry James Prince and his Agapemonites in 19th century England. We are led to believe the Prince part is a different story. We do get back to Socrates before it's too late.
Interspersed with the attempts to have written a book we are treated to the story of The Life of John Tunnock. While he was pretty much a jerk, as a jerk with money he was pretty well liked (even if he never seems to finish that book).
Compared with Gray's Lanark, it's doubtful this book will be a conversation piece at the cocktail party. I can imagine many claiming to have read Lanark but few bothering to mention Old Men in Love. To those, like me, who like to read those books that are difficult to classify (much less review), this will be enjoyable. Those who don't like to wander too far afield from books with beginnings, middles and ends, should avoid this one.
I do wonder - if a book is about the writing of a book by someone with no writing skills, is it still meta-fiction? Or is it meta-folly? Perhaps Old Men in Love qualifies as both.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good but not Alasdairs best
26 July 2010
By Simon
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
There is often more than meets the eye with Alasdairs novels, hidden meanings and obscure references, so its very possible/likely I missed something when reading this, but I don't think its his best work. Its a quick read and felt like it had been written quickly (maybe Alasdair thinks he doesnt have another 20 years left to rewrite Lanark?)
In terms of asthetics, OMIL has a few nice chapter headings etc, but nothing like Lanark or Pretty things, if I was buying again I would be tempted to save a few quid and make do with the paperback. You could get some tunnocks caramel wafers with the change.
In terms of asthetics, OMIL has a few nice chapter headings etc, but nothing like Lanark or Pretty things, if I was buying again I would be tempted to save a few quid and make do with the paperback. You could get some tunnocks caramel wafers with the change.
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