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A review by athos
Lanark: A Life in Four Books by Alasdair Gray
challenging
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
3.0
After 6 months, I've finally finished Lanark. Dear god, this was a frustrating book to read. There were bits I loved and got a lot of meaning out of, but these were rare in a sea of nonsense. No doubt that parts of the book I didn't understand may have great meaning for others, so I don't want to shun it just because I didn't get it.
My favourite parts were the middle two sections (book 1 and 2) detailing Duncan Thaw's life, probably because it was the least surreal compared to Lanark's books. And while book 3 and the first half of book 4 were annoying meaningless nonsense to me, I did enjoy the last 150 pages or so. All the stuff about intercalenderical zones, Lanark aging quickly and struggling to connect with his family or make a real change in the face of bureaucracy. The epilogue where Lanark meets the author was also a moment of clarity and explanation done in a very enjoyable meta/fourth wall break moment.
I don't think I'd recommend this book to everyone since it probably deserves a small cult audience who can actually gain meaning from this. If all the hospital stuff and dragonhide was taken from the book, and it was made about 200 pages shorter, I think I would've given this a higher rating.
Here's my favourite paragraph from the book, when Duncan Thaw looks at a photo of his late mother on her wedding day (p.316). I think it was beautifully written:
"With sudden curiosity he looked at a wedding photograph on the mantelpiece. His father (shy, pleased, silly and young-looking), stood arm in arm with a slender laughing woman in one of the knee-length bridal dresses fashionable in the twenties. Her high-heeled shoes made her look the taller of the two. Thaw could think of no connection between this lively shop girl full of songs and sexual daring and the stern gaunt woman he remembered. How could one become the other? Or were they like different sides of a globe with time turning the gaunt face into the light while the merry one slid round into shadow? But only a few old people remembered her youth nowadays and soon both her youth and her age would be wholly forgotten. He thought, "Oh no! No!" and felt for the only time in his life a pang of pure sorrow without rage of self-pity in it. He could not weep, but a berg of frozen tears floated near his surface, and he knew that berg floated in everyone, and wondered if they felt it as seldom as he did"
My favourite parts were the middle two sections (book 1 and 2) detailing Duncan Thaw's life, probably because it was the least surreal compared to Lanark's books. And while book 3 and the first half of book 4 were annoying meaningless nonsense to me, I did enjoy the last 150 pages or so. All the stuff about intercalenderical zones, Lanark aging quickly and struggling to connect with his family or make a real change in the face of bureaucracy. The epilogue where Lanark meets the author was also a moment of clarity and explanation done in a very enjoyable meta/fourth wall break moment.
I don't think I'd recommend this book to everyone since it probably deserves a small cult audience who can actually gain meaning from this. If all the hospital stuff and dragonhide was taken from the book, and it was made about 200 pages shorter, I think I would've given this a higher rating.
Here's my favourite paragraph from the book, when Duncan Thaw looks at a photo of his late mother on her wedding day (p.316). I think it was beautifully written:
"With sudden curiosity he looked at a wedding photograph on the mantelpiece. His father (shy, pleased, silly and young-looking), stood arm in arm with a slender laughing woman in one of the knee-length bridal dresses fashionable in the twenties. Her high-heeled shoes made her look the taller of the two. Thaw could think of no connection between this lively shop girl full of songs and sexual daring and the stern gaunt woman he remembered. How could one become the other? Or were they like different sides of a globe with time turning the gaunt face into the light while the merry one slid round into shadow? But only a few old people remembered her youth nowadays and soon both her youth and her age would be wholly forgotten. He thought, "Oh no! No!" and felt for the only time in his life a pang of pure sorrow without rage of self-pity in it. He could not weep, but a berg of frozen tears floated near his surface, and he knew that berg floated in everyone, and wondered if they felt it as seldom as he did"