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The Big Man
The big man is Dan Scoular, legend of physical prowess in a decaying Ayrshire mining community. When a bare-knuckle fight offers both money and a purpose, he finds it turns into a monumental struggle to keep his heritage and integrity intact.
303 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
21 people are currently reading
237 people want to read
About the author
William McIlvanney
40 books227 followersWilliam McIlvanney was a Scottish writer of novels, short stories, and poetry. He was a champion of gritty yet poetic literature; his works Laidlaw, The Papers of Tony Veitch, and Walking Wounded are all known for their portrayal of Glasgow in the 1970s. He is regarded as "the father of 'Tartan Noir’" and has been described as "Scotland's Camus".
His first book, Remedy is None, was published in 1966 and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1967. Docherty (1975), a moving portrait of a miner whose courage and endurance is tested during the depression, won the Whitbread Novel Award.
Laidlaw (1977), The Papers of Tony Veitch (1983) and Strange Loyalties (1991) are crime novels featuring Inspector Jack Laidlaw. Laidlaw is considered to be the first book of Tartan Noir.
William McIlvanney was also an acclaimed poet, the author of The Longships in Harbour: Poems (1970) and Surviving the Shipwreck (1991), which also contains pieces of journalism, including an essay about T. S. Eliot. McIlvanney wrote a screenplay based on his short story Dreaming (published in Walking Wounded in 1989) which was filmed by BBC Scotland in 1990 and won a BAFTA.
Since April 2013, McIlvanney's own website has featured personal, reflective and topical writing, as well as examples of his journalism.
Adapted from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William...
His first book, Remedy is None, was published in 1966 and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1967. Docherty (1975), a moving portrait of a miner whose courage and endurance is tested during the depression, won the Whitbread Novel Award.
Laidlaw (1977), The Papers of Tony Veitch (1983) and Strange Loyalties (1991) are crime novels featuring Inspector Jack Laidlaw. Laidlaw is considered to be the first book of Tartan Noir.
William McIlvanney was also an acclaimed poet, the author of The Longships in Harbour: Poems (1970) and Surviving the Shipwreck (1991), which also contains pieces of journalism, including an essay about T. S. Eliot. McIlvanney wrote a screenplay based on his short story Dreaming (published in Walking Wounded in 1989) which was filmed by BBC Scotland in 1990 and won a BAFTA.
Since April 2013, McIlvanney's own website has featured personal, reflective and topical writing, as well as examples of his journalism.
Adapted from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William...
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
September 9, 2021
What a diamond in the rough. Never would have expected this book to surprise me as much as it did.
Incredibly dense, sometimes overwritten but a jaw-dropping command of the poetry from the starting gun to the finish line. Still, I've never taken so long to read a book with this many pages. It can really cram your brain.
It's a story of identity and class solidarity that feels even more appropriate now as it did when it was written. I'm floored that this is not widely considered as a classic when other, similar stories are as overwritten and don't come close to the amount of brilliant bursts of insight this book provides. What a treat.
Incredibly dense, sometimes overwritten but a jaw-dropping command of the poetry from the starting gun to the finish line. Still, I've never taken so long to read a book with this many pages. It can really cram your brain.
It's a story of identity and class solidarity that feels even more appropriate now as it did when it was written. I'm floored that this is not widely considered as a classic when other, similar stories are as overwritten and don't come close to the amount of brilliant bursts of insight this book provides. What a treat.
October 26, 2021
I'm very grateful to have found this book. I approached it with minimal expectations but I was surprised and delighted! I love it when writers observe and portray working class culture effectively and seldom have I seen it done better than in this book. It is all about the author here. Some novels make the characters the main focus but this is all about the author - his voice is the most important thing in this book and that's fine when you're as talented as William McIlvanney. In a bizarre way it's very short-sighted in that I never found myself thinking too far ahead. I was drawn in one sentence at a time, always anticipating what the next line would be, never mind the next page. For me, that's a rare find. If I have to be critical, It's probably one chapter too long and the Hollywood ending didn't fit the working class roots. Also the dialogue is often spelt phonetically rather than properly. There's no need for it and it's a real pet hate of mine when I find it in any book. But all things considered my complaints are rather pedantic. I have to acknowledge the effort and skill that went in to this. It probably makes my list of top five favorite novels.
July 28, 2019
Excellent read
Characters come to life, extending their introduction in the Liadlaw trilogy and a great ending even though you know what happens to Dan subsequently
Characters come to life, extending their introduction in the Liadlaw trilogy and a great ending even though you know what happens to Dan subsequently
September 8, 2024
Aye, fair bit intellectual at times, and could use less didactic methods of discussing the philosophical beliefs within the work but fuck yes to a book about a big man slogging out life in thatcherite decline Scotland
May 19, 2025
Matt Mason and two of his friends are driving to Thornbank in search of another man. They’re looking for Dan Scoular, a man with a reputation for fighting, whom Matt Mason wants to be his man in a bare-knuckle fight he’s arranged with a rival. Dan has never fought for money before – just for anger or a sense of injustice. He’s married to Betty, who was once middle-class and has ambitions to get back there. But Dan lost his well-paid job in the industrial devastation of the ’80s and now gets by on a series of nothing jobs. The marriage has become one long squabble. So although he doesn’t want to fight, Dan agrees – the money Matt is offering is too much to turn down lightly. Matt hands him over to Fast Frankie White, tasked with overseeing his training and converting his raw talent into the skills needed to take on an experienced bare-knuckle fighter.
McIlvanney is back on his recurring themes here of masculinity and the impact of the loss of male-dominated industries in Scotland in the Thatcher years. I’m not sure how bare-knuckle fighting is perceived in other countries so, briefly, in Scotland it’s not illegal but nor is it regulated. McIlvanney portrays it as more akin to dog-fighting than boxing – rival camps put forward a champion each and bet enormous sums on the outcome, and victory is decided on a last man standing basis. The bare-knuckle fighters are admired by the kind of losers who support this vicious sport in the way a racehorse or greyhound might be – a superb animal, to be cosseted till its skills fade, and then discarded. If they get brain-damaged, disabled or killed along the way, too bad – that’s all part of the thrill for the watchers.
Dan’s opponent is Cutty Dawson, an ageing veteran of the sport, already blinded in one eye. But he’s enormously strong and his years of experience give him the advantage. He also has the will to win, and it’s not at all clear if Dan has. It’s up to Fast Frankie to prepare him mentally as well as physically for what he’ll face. As part of this process, they move Dan to Glasgow, away from wife and family, and Frankie has him training to the point of exhaustion every day. But still a rumour reaches Dan’s ears that back in Thornbank, Betty may be having an affair…
In general, I love McIlvanney’s writing – the way he manages a level of poeticism even when his subjects are gritty and bleak. But somehow it didn’t quite work for me in this one. I think it’s because, although the book is written in the third person, we spend a lot of time inside Dan’s head, and I felt there was a disconnect between the type of man he is and the thoughts he is given to think. There’s a lot of philosophising on male pride, questions of identity, even, unusually for McIlvanney, the position of women in his man’s world, and, while interesting, they didn’t ring true to me as thoughts someone like Dan would have. To reverse that slightly since it sounds incredibly and unintentionally snobbish, I felt that someone as introspective, intelligent and thoughtful as Dan appears to be inside his mind would have been a different man on the outside. I found myself thinking that dread word that often sounds the death knell for literary fiction – pretentious. The portrayal of Dan felt pretentious, as if somehow, in order to make the valid point that working class men are not some lower, less intelligent breed as they are sometimes painted, McIlvanney had gone too far in making Dan have thoughts that sounded in their expression more as if they were coming from an educated, intellectual mind – a McIlvanney, in fact. But McIlvanney would never have taken on a bare-knuckle fight. He became a teacher. In Dan’s case, had the language been less poetic and the thoughts more plainly expressed, this disconnect between the outer man and the inner may not have happened.
On the upside, McIlvanney is always great on the subject of working-class masculinity, threatened and eroded by worklessness and changing social attitudes. His commentary on the devastation wrought on the working man, primarily, by the industrial policies of the late 20th century is always insightful and full of quiet anger. And in this one he shows how that loss of an industrial base also impacted communities, leaving them unmoored and fragmenting as some men struggled to move on while others moved away. He also shows how rising working class prosperity eats away at the solidarity that once drew and held communities together. But the trajectory of Dan’s story is somewhat predictable, I felt, and in the end McIlvanney falls into a too easy optimism, that in extremis these communities will come back together and find the bonds that tie them are still strong.
This review has come over as too negative, which is really attributable less to the novel’s overall quality and more to my own struggle to define why I didn’t love it as much as some of his other books. McIlvanney is always worth reading and, despite all my criticisms, this one is too.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
McIlvanney is back on his recurring themes here of masculinity and the impact of the loss of male-dominated industries in Scotland in the Thatcher years. I’m not sure how bare-knuckle fighting is perceived in other countries so, briefly, in Scotland it’s not illegal but nor is it regulated. McIlvanney portrays it as more akin to dog-fighting than boxing – rival camps put forward a champion each and bet enormous sums on the outcome, and victory is decided on a last man standing basis. The bare-knuckle fighters are admired by the kind of losers who support this vicious sport in the way a racehorse or greyhound might be – a superb animal, to be cosseted till its skills fade, and then discarded. If they get brain-damaged, disabled or killed along the way, too bad – that’s all part of the thrill for the watchers.
Dan’s opponent is Cutty Dawson, an ageing veteran of the sport, already blinded in one eye. But he’s enormously strong and his years of experience give him the advantage. He also has the will to win, and it’s not at all clear if Dan has. It’s up to Fast Frankie to prepare him mentally as well as physically for what he’ll face. As part of this process, they move Dan to Glasgow, away from wife and family, and Frankie has him training to the point of exhaustion every day. But still a rumour reaches Dan’s ears that back in Thornbank, Betty may be having an affair…
In general, I love McIlvanney’s writing – the way he manages a level of poeticism even when his subjects are gritty and bleak. But somehow it didn’t quite work for me in this one. I think it’s because, although the book is written in the third person, we spend a lot of time inside Dan’s head, and I felt there was a disconnect between the type of man he is and the thoughts he is given to think. There’s a lot of philosophising on male pride, questions of identity, even, unusually for McIlvanney, the position of women in his man’s world, and, while interesting, they didn’t ring true to me as thoughts someone like Dan would have. To reverse that slightly since it sounds incredibly and unintentionally snobbish, I felt that someone as introspective, intelligent and thoughtful as Dan appears to be inside his mind would have been a different man on the outside. I found myself thinking that dread word that often sounds the death knell for literary fiction – pretentious. The portrayal of Dan felt pretentious, as if somehow, in order to make the valid point that working class men are not some lower, less intelligent breed as they are sometimes painted, McIlvanney had gone too far in making Dan have thoughts that sounded in their expression more as if they were coming from an educated, intellectual mind – a McIlvanney, in fact. But McIlvanney would never have taken on a bare-knuckle fight. He became a teacher. In Dan’s case, had the language been less poetic and the thoughts more plainly expressed, this disconnect between the outer man and the inner may not have happened.
On the upside, McIlvanney is always great on the subject of working-class masculinity, threatened and eroded by worklessness and changing social attitudes. His commentary on the devastation wrought on the working man, primarily, by the industrial policies of the late 20th century is always insightful and full of quiet anger. And in this one he shows how that loss of an industrial base also impacted communities, leaving them unmoored and fragmenting as some men struggled to move on while others moved away. He also shows how rising working class prosperity eats away at the solidarity that once drew and held communities together. But the trajectory of Dan’s story is somewhat predictable, I felt, and in the end McIlvanney falls into a too easy optimism, that in extremis these communities will come back together and find the bonds that tie them are still strong.
This review has come over as too negative, which is really attributable less to the novel’s overall quality and more to my own struggle to define why I didn’t love it as much as some of his other books. McIlvanney is always worth reading and, despite all my criticisms, this one is too.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
June 10, 2023
The car moved on under a sky where some cloud-racks looked like canyons leading to infinity and others were dissolving islands. There, floating in the air, were the dreams of some mad architect, wild, fantasticated structures that darkness would soon demolish.
Prose is William McIlvanney’s superpower and passages like this move him to the top of my favourite author list. 'The Big Man' was one of those books that I purposely didn't want to finish. I was racked with apprehension throughout. Dan while enjoying having a reputation of being a fighter was also a man that doesn't fight without reason; it is this reasoning that we feel rearing its head repeatedly within the pages; but Dan is a man in need of money, he is a clever man, a deep-thinking man but with all that, it doesn't mean that Dan is necessarily a man of principle if he was then maybe his wife wouldn't be having an affair and affair that one of the town's busybodies means to tell him about. To say that Dan is under pressure is an understatement.
It is these complexities that have the organizers of the fight that Dan has agreed to worried, while Dan is following all the training that he has agreed to Matt Mason and Fast Frankie White still cannot see the killer instinct needed to win and Matt Mason is not a man to cross, something that Fast Frankie does his best to drive home to Dan.
Tension fills the pages with beautiful language that can only belong to McIlvanney and when the book ends you are left bereft especially if you have read Strange Loyalties.
He had always known her life a selfless giving, a bequest from the living of everything she had. That moment was the codicil, not one that change what was given but clarified the terms on which it was received. The proviso was the selfishness of others. The beneficiaries could only become beneficiaries through their own greedy indifference. Otherwise, how could they have accepted a gift so destructive of the donor?
Dan had seen a glimpsed truth not only of his mother’s life that day but of whole generations of working-class women. From then on the praises he would hear given to those self-sacrificing many were to have a doubtful ring for him. It was right, justice, that the true heroism of working-class life should have been accorded to those women. But like all heroism it was a dubious commodity. That lost army of fraught, unglamorous women, with the coats they had to make last for years and the shoes inside which strips of cardboard, absorbing dampness, recorded the passage of hare times like the rings of a dead tree, had done unbelievable thing. But they shouldn’t have been asked to do them..
Its these passages and a hundred others that leave me astounded with McIlvanney’s gift.
February 11, 2024
A 'man out of time' - a phrase that could perhaps be used to describe both The Big Man’s ‘hero’ – Ayrshire’s ‘down-at-heel fighter’, Dan Scoular, a man who refuses to conform to the increasingly fashionable notion of what constitutes ‘modern-day’ success i.e. primarily material wealth – and its author – one of Scotland’s and (in my book) the world’s most perceptive and erudite ever – William McIlvanney, who, once again, takes a relatively ‘stock genre’ (or, at least, tale), here that of the exploitation of the physical prowess of ‘downtrodden man’, and turns it into a far more profound account of a man’s (and perhaps, society’s) fight for identity, dignity and self-respect. And, it is McIlvanney’s repeated (though actually, rather sporadic, in ‘modern literary output’ terms) attempts at carving out such humanistic fables, all (predominantly) set within his favoured milieu of the Scottish working-class (some made good, most not), that makes the man such a rare, (sadly) uncelebrated and (one can’t escape the feeling) ‘unfashionable’ author amongst today’s more ‘tech savvy’ scribes.
McIlvanney’s prose once again puts all but the finest exponents in the shade. This is a man whose every sentence is carefully conceived and crafted and whose ‘verbal imagination’ and use of metaphor is second to none. Whether it be Dan’s cogitations on his chequered familial history, his misgivings relating to his inability to ‘support’ his young wife and family or the moral dilemma posed by local Mr Big, Matt Mason’s, offer of ready cash for Dan’s participation in a bare-knuckle fight to settle a dispute between Mason and local underworld rival, Cam Colvin, McIlvanney weaves his magical literary spell throughout (peppered, of course, with the man’s ‘laugh out loud’ moments of humour), creating another minor masterpiece in the process.
McIlvanney’s prose once again puts all but the finest exponents in the shade. This is a man whose every sentence is carefully conceived and crafted and whose ‘verbal imagination’ and use of metaphor is second to none. Whether it be Dan’s cogitations on his chequered familial history, his misgivings relating to his inability to ‘support’ his young wife and family or the moral dilemma posed by local Mr Big, Matt Mason’s, offer of ready cash for Dan’s participation in a bare-knuckle fight to settle a dispute between Mason and local underworld rival, Cam Colvin, McIlvanney weaves his magical literary spell throughout (peppered, of course, with the man’s ‘laugh out loud’ moments of humour), creating another minor masterpiece in the process.
April 19, 2023
Having recently watched, for the first time, the 1990 move version of 'The Big Man', I decided to reread the novel of the same name by the late, great Scottish novelist, William McIlvanney.
The eponymous Big Man of the title is inhabited by Dan Scoular, a former miner in a small Ayrshire town stripped of its main industry and looking for hope in a working-class hero. Having grown up in Ayrshire and having witnessed the 1980s miners strike the monochrome vision cast by McIlvanney was not too difficult to imagine. However, there is much more unearthed than blue-collar angst and political commentary.
The core of this novel is the bare knuckle fight between Scoular and the appropriately named 'Cutty' Dawson cast against the backdrop of an alleged feud between two minor crime lords in the Glasgow underworld. Dan, the Big Man, is unemployed, desperate for money and some sense of meaning, overshadowed by a failing marriage and a disillusioned community, when the opportunity to use his pugilistic talents arises. He knows he is being used and wrestles with questions of his own morality and identity as he digs deep to find the seam of his true self. This novel is descriptively laden with a nuanced understanding of the human condition amid class and the criminal divide.
The eponymous Big Man of the title is inhabited by Dan Scoular, a former miner in a small Ayrshire town stripped of its main industry and looking for hope in a working-class hero. Having grown up in Ayrshire and having witnessed the 1980s miners strike the monochrome vision cast by McIlvanney was not too difficult to imagine. However, there is much more unearthed than blue-collar angst and political commentary.
The core of this novel is the bare knuckle fight between Scoular and the appropriately named 'Cutty' Dawson cast against the backdrop of an alleged feud between two minor crime lords in the Glasgow underworld. Dan, the Big Man, is unemployed, desperate for money and some sense of meaning, overshadowed by a failing marriage and a disillusioned community, when the opportunity to use his pugilistic talents arises. He knows he is being used and wrestles with questions of his own morality and identity as he digs deep to find the seam of his true self. This novel is descriptively laden with a nuanced understanding of the human condition amid class and the criminal divide.
December 15, 2024
*3.5 stars.
"There, floating in the air, were the dreams of some mad architect, wild, fantasticated structures that darkness would soon demolish" (1). *Description of evening clouds.
"A boring journey had made reactions in the car sluggish. Each was in his own thoughts like a sleeping-bag" (2).
"…with a smile as selective as a roller-towel" (7).
"...and it had hit her like a jack-in-the-box with a knife" (18).
"They gave you a few lines of ritual dialogue that came from God knows what lexicon of antiquated male prejudice…" (18). (Upon the marriage vows.
"…who sometimes gave the heart-wrenching impression that life was for him like jaywalking at Le Mans" (21).
"She thought of One Thousand and One Nights of clichés, of a Scheherazade whose phrenetic variety of repetitions was not a postponement of death but of life, a charm against the dread of coming alive" (25). *As a despiser of the cliche, this transports my soul in its specificity of the limitations of the rote, the overdone.
"It had been the fulfillment of a dream for him and, being a stubborn man, he simply refused to wake up, though these days it was taking more and more whisky to keep him like that" (43).
"Eddie would never again take farmers for simple people. He supposed that if you had won arguments with the earth, there weren't a lot of other ones you were likely to lose" (160).
"They were a terrible gallery he couldn't bear to enter, a room of his own mind that held the half- formed nightmare possibilities of what the world can make happen to the people we love" (276).
"They cuddled, which was their passion putting on its working clothes" (285).
"Her heart rose in her like applause" (286).
"The accoutrements on the dressing-table were an array of vanities" (288).
"There, floating in the air, were the dreams of some mad architect, wild, fantasticated structures that darkness would soon demolish" (1). *Description of evening clouds.
"A boring journey had made reactions in the car sluggish. Each was in his own thoughts like a sleeping-bag" (2).
"…with a smile as selective as a roller-towel" (7).
"...and it had hit her like a jack-in-the-box with a knife" (18).
"They gave you a few lines of ritual dialogue that came from God knows what lexicon of antiquated male prejudice…" (18). (Upon the marriage vows.
"…who sometimes gave the heart-wrenching impression that life was for him like jaywalking at Le Mans" (21).
"She thought of One Thousand and One Nights of clichés, of a Scheherazade whose phrenetic variety of repetitions was not a postponement of death but of life, a charm against the dread of coming alive" (25). *As a despiser of the cliche, this transports my soul in its specificity of the limitations of the rote, the overdone.
"It had been the fulfillment of a dream for him and, being a stubborn man, he simply refused to wake up, though these days it was taking more and more whisky to keep him like that" (43).
"Eddie would never again take farmers for simple people. He supposed that if you had won arguments with the earth, there weren't a lot of other ones you were likely to lose" (160).
"They were a terrible gallery he couldn't bear to enter, a room of his own mind that held the half- formed nightmare possibilities of what the world can make happen to the people we love" (276).
"They cuddled, which was their passion putting on its working clothes" (285).
"Her heart rose in her like applause" (286).
"The accoutrements on the dressing-table were an array of vanities" (288).
June 13, 2018
I decided to read this after reading McIlvanney’s Docherty. I preferred Docherty, probably because it’s a bit of a coming-of-age story and I like that, but this was still a great book. I’m looking forward to trying his other novels.
Read more reviews here: https://examiningtheodd.com/2018/06/1...
Read more reviews here: https://examiningtheodd.com/2018/06/1...
March 2, 2023
unemployed and muddling through a failing marriage, The Big Man himself enters into an illegal bare-knuckle boxing match. it's also a thoughtful metaphor about exploitation and the working class and solidarity. but not in an annoying way. really beautifully written, though some pages get a little repititious.
May 20, 2023
Another unflinching view of working class Scottish life held up against "new wealth". It's being true to one's self versus selling out everything you are. Big Dan makes a moral decision and it could cost him his life in the near future...but he feels he's a better man for it...more alive than he's been in years. But it comes at a cost.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 1, 2017
read whilst in bute
i forgot how good McIlvanney is as a writer .
The sense of time and place , the burning social conscience are added to great characters and great plot
i forgot how good McIlvanney is as a writer .
The sense of time and place , the burning social conscience are added to great characters and great plot
November 20, 2020
Overwritten and old-fashioned in a lot of ways, but with occasional flashes of brilliance in a turn of phrase
May 16, 2023
Fantastic one of the best books I've ever read
Nothing it feels like your walking along side of Dan you can feel his atmosphere thanks very much will read more of his books
Nothing it feels like your walking along side of Dan you can feel his atmosphere thanks very much will read more of his books
February 28, 2025
Big fan of the author but didn't care for this story.
April 23, 2014
Very moving, but also funny in parts. The dialogue is excellent and the characterisations are so good that I felt that I was in the village of Thornbank and was part of the story. Mcilvanney is good at describing how Dan prepares for the fight and I liked the part about having to continue to do ordinary tasks when something huge is happening in your life-"Upright, he tried to conjure normalcy out of small actions. He took a long time washing himself at the basin. He brushed his teeth three times, as if Cutty Dawson and he were to meet for a smiling contest....He did all of this very slowly and thoroughly because he was trying through the ceremony of habit to make the day real for him. It didn't work." This is a well written book which tells a compelling story.
June 16, 2013
Set in 1980's Ayrshire, this is the story of Dan Scoular, unemployed ex-miner, a local legend for his fighting ability. He is approached by a Glasgow gangster to take part in an illegal bare-knuckle fight.
William McIlvanney was born and brought up in Ayrshire, and captures the people and place beutifully, this is a great read, but what I would call a "dense" book, where every thought, word and action of the main characters is analysed, which slows down the action, nevertherless a good read.
William McIlvanney was born and brought up in Ayrshire, and captures the people and place beutifully, this is a great read, but what I would call a "dense" book, where every thought, word and action of the main characters is analysed, which slows down the action, nevertherless a good read.
December 16, 2015
From 'Each was in his own thoughts like a sleeping bag' to 'Three of them wined like a chorus in slight disharmony' this was a joy of an examination of the time and morals of a man to whom Life had happened in ways he had to learn to deal with.
I'm saddened by William McIlvanney's recent death, but glad to know I've still some books of his to read for the first time. All of which more than pay for a second and a third.
I'm saddened by William McIlvanney's recent death, but glad to know I've still some books of his to read for the first time. All of which more than pay for a second and a third.
April 10, 2016
Not only was it a very thought-provoking and atmospheric portrayal of the socio-economic challenges of 1980s industrial decline in Scotland, but an effective account of self-discovery most readers will be able to relate to; this is timeless and applicable to any situation, made even more poignant in the context of a supposed 'hard man' who is unexpectedly sensitive. Challenges the old-fashioned ideas of gender roles complicated by social change.
June 24, 2013
Provides a very personal and strongly felt picture of a harsh & disappearing village culture: you are taken inside someone's head. Very effectively makes the reader part of a story that most of us have never been near.
And of course, being set in Scotland, I was particularly appreciative...
And of course, being set in Scotland, I was particularly appreciative...
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews