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A review by rhiannoncs
Lanark by Alasdair Gray
4.0
Loved this - the format is funky (it is arranged in four books - book three, followed by a prologue, followed by books one and two, then most of book four, an epilogue, and then the final four chapters) but with actual purpose to it. It works.
The book begins with a man who does not know his own name or anything about himself (he chooses to call himself Lanark) arriving in a city he doesn't recognize (and no one is able to tell him its name). It is a city where everyone is afflicted by diseases that are deeply reflective of what is going on in their inner psyches. I won't tell you what happens here, because it is book three so it's rather late in the plot.
Books one and two tell us about Lanark before he was Lanark - when he was a boy named Thaw growing up in post-World War II Glasgow. Thaw is a deeply unsympathetic artist, but his story is compelling.
While it's slow going at moments, and sometimes it is absolutely overwhelming in its nihilism, the entire book is worth reading for the epilogue; it's one of the funniest, most brilliant things I've read in ages.
The book begins with a man who does not know his own name or anything about himself (he chooses to call himself Lanark) arriving in a city he doesn't recognize (and no one is able to tell him its name). It is a city where everyone is afflicted by diseases that are deeply reflective of what is going on in their inner psyches. I won't tell you what happens here, because it is book three so it's rather late in the plot.
Books one and two tell us about Lanark before he was Lanark - when he was a boy named Thaw growing up in post-World War II Glasgow. Thaw is a deeply unsympathetic artist, but his story is compelling.
While it's slow going at moments, and sometimes it is absolutely overwhelming in its nihilism, the entire book is worth reading for the epilogue; it's one of the funniest, most brilliant things I've read in ages.