Grace and Miss Partridge

by George Friel

190 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

George Friel (1910 - 1975) was a Scottish writer. He was born in Glasgow as the fourth of seven children, and was educated at St. Mungo's Academy and the University of Glasgow. After a period of service in the army, he spent the rest of his life working as a teacher in Glasgow.

Friel's fourth novel, Mr. Alfred M.A., made it to the "100 Best Scottish Books of all Time" list.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls]

George Friel’s novels were originally published by the bold and innovative Calder & Boyars, and reading the linguistic slyness, the fondness for wordplays in and out of dialect, and the surreal looking-glass version of Glasgow evoking the Joycean vision of Dublin, there’s no mystery why. In his third novel, Friel keeps his tale confined to a tenement in an unnamed part of Glasgow, and explores the disintegration of a mentally disturbed spinster fixated on saving the titular Grace from a life of whoredom and sin. The cast of characters are rooted in the realistic speech and rhythm of the period and place, but their flair for fancy and wordplay transfers them to a weird world of Friel’s own, with a sense of mischief that could come straight from the pages of Raymond Queneau. Another fine novel from a writer unlikely to find any readers outside of Scotland. But you should read him, you non-Scottish fiends, if you ever want the merest flicker of my respect.

[Cody]

I am quickly becoming convinced that Friel is one of the most slept on writers of the middle of the 20th-C. While his books are told with warmth and affection for his native Glasgow, there is a not insubstantial darkness that is a constant through each. This time round: oh, possible child murder, schizophrenia, and bloody, bloody street violence. Lovely!

Hey, I like it rough, Tiger (reference in the book—read it).