Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... Swing Hammer Swing! (1992)by Jeff Torrington
None Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. no reviews | add a review
AwardsNotable Lists
'Swing Hammer Swing! is a seriously good novel. Critics have rightly claimed that he does for Glasgow what James Joyce did for Dublin' - Stephen Pile, Daily Telegraph From the infamous Glasgow slum, the Gorbals, Tam Clay chronicles a week in his life, in the last days before the demolishers move in. Intersecting friends, old-timers and eccentrics, navigating his pregnant wife, frisky bedfellows and debt collectors, Tam stumbles through a derelict world on an odyssey of self-discovery. Wildly funny, outlandish and insanely ambitious - thirty years in the writing - Torrington's pulverised '60s Glasgow is crammed to the crevices with a blizzard of his unique and insatiable genius. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction 1900- 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
On his rambling mini-odyssey, Tam introduces us to the inhabitants of the Gorbals such as a drunk "doing the Boozer's Bolero - three steps forward on tippytoes, two back heavily on heels" and punter Talky who is the only one who can communicate with blind and deaf Salty: "Even the deef urnae oot-o-range of that bletherin wee bastard." But, along with the humor and the irreverence is also a huge dose of reality when it comes to these poor sods' actual circumstances - where will they all go when the Gorbals disappear? To the anonymity of the high-rise council flats - "vertical Barlinnies" - or, as some do, straight into a cold grave? Attempting to grasp that the world they know is crumbling beneath them is not only frightening, but near impossible to accept since they have no power to change anything: "the world's a bag of bees God pokes at with a stick and growls - 'Make honey, damn you'!"
One of Torrington's great strengths is his placing scenes of powerful symbolism juxtaposed with pseudo-flippant comments about very same scenes, such as putting old Salty at a lone table, palms upturned awaiting a friendly touch, without anyone able to explain that his only interpreter Talky has died, and only a few pages earlier, scorning the very same literary trope: "It was too bad that the blind in literature were doubly disadvantaged; readers tend to assume they're symbolic: 'I presume your blind chappy represents the spiritual myopia of contemporary society?' 'Well, naw, as a matter of fact he jist couldnae see!'"
Even with the abundant humor, be prepared for a sometimes challenging read, with Tam's various philosophical contemplations on the topics of life and death, but it's one that is highly rewarding in the end for these characters are well worth knowing with their enormous ability for warmth and caring, and well worth mourning for their powerlessness when it comes to their eventual futures. Tam comes up with his own solution in the end, but we don't get to forget that not all are as fortunate. ( )