Lanark: A Life in Four Books

Amazing book, absolute classic

you often pick it up in book shops, you hear folk saying what a difficult book it is, you put it back down. you know you'll repeat the exercise frequently, and you'll wish you had the will and intellect to read, understand and enjoy this book, which people have made you frightened of. then, after years of this behaviour, you will buy it twice in two days. which i did, the first copy as a christmas present for my son, the 2nd, the day after, for £2 in a charity shop, when i decided that i couldn't wait for him to get through it so i could scadge a loan of it. well, i wasn't going to let him read it first! unthank goodness i did! this is truly one of the great scottish novels, years in the writing, greatly considered, utterly compelling, and has the quality attached to it that makes you read slower toward the end, because you don't want it to. a mesmerising, towering achievement of a book. unthanks mr. gray! the tale is a simple one and a complex one, and an emotional one as it details the life of lanark/duncan thaw through his failures (many) and triumphs (few, but inspiring). these take place in two distinctive settings and times, creating some of the most skillfully written science fiction in the process. the 'glasgow' books are written with great care and obvious love, with a nod to james kelman in their creation. i can't think of greater praise. i'm not going to wrestle with the guts of the story, the why's, the how's, the where's, etc., as it's covered more than ably by other reviewers, and in the actual book, of course. it's important, however, to say that you don't have to be scottish to read and enjoy it, just read and enjoy it!

Grayの最高傑作というだけでなく、20世紀に英語で書かれた偉大な小説の一つと目されている作品。全体は4部に分かれ、自伝的な2部と、ディストピア小説的な2部を中心として構成されている。基本的な語りは直線的だが、何故か第3部から開始されたり、本当の結末以前に作者が登場しての結末が置かれたりと、実験的な装いもあるが、決して難解ではない。小説の中に一つの世界が構築され、小説を読んでいる間、その中に棲みこんでしまうこととなる、希な小説の一つ。広く読まれることを期待する。そのためには翻訳が必要かもしれないが。

In the deep mud or mire of dystopian Glasgow, somewhere near the dread calendar zone, men and women, like worms, slither down tight holes searching for sunlight or food, hopefully not made from human meat and bones. Their skins are often aflame with dragon scales, and their souls are in hopes of healing as well as loving. All the doctors are helpful, kind, misleading, and utterly untrained. This now classic postmodern novel is thought by many to be one of the greatest novels of all time and is undoubtably the finest novel from Scotland of this century. It is certainly brilliant and endlessly creative, astonishing in its originality, even as it steals most of the world’s literary devices and documents each theft as it’s occurring. When was the last time you read a book whose plot was driven by literary devices rather than a plot assisted by them. The book is determined to begin with Book Three and is followed by a prologue, then an Interlude, Book Two, Book Four, an Epilogue, and a Tail Piece and all content seems made to fall in line accordingly. Also, consider the two leading characters, Lanark, who cannot love or be loved, and Duncan Thaw, the great artist who will not fit in. It turns out, the men are one and the same, and one is an exaggeration of the other. Make sense? Maybe not, but Gray delights in being a savant of the imagination and one of the world’s most knowledgeable academics. Not so surprising then (though I was surprised), when the book logically concludes with a sketch of it’s author. Let me also add, that the book is blindingly insightful in relation to the failure to love and the failure to find it, the calendar zone of the worse dystopian mindset. I kept saying to myself, throughout the book: “My God, that’s me, that’s true.”

A waste of time, money and paper.