Old Men in Love by Alasdair Gray

Old Men in Love by Alasdair Gray

'Alasdair Gray's new novel, Old Men in Love, exhibits all of those faintly preposterous foibles that make him a writer more loved than prized. The bulk of the text constitutes the posthumous papers of a recondite - yet venal - retired Glaswegian schoolmaster, named John Tunnock (as in the celebrated tea cake), that have, seemingly, been edited and collated by Gray himself. 'This literary subterfuge serves to fool no one who needs fooling, yet will satisfy all who believe that the truth can be found more exactly in chance occurrences, serendipity, and the eggy scrapings from the breakfast plates of the neglected, than any crude, linear naturalism. 'Tunnock is a beguiling figure, at once feisty and fusty. His historical fictions chivvy us into Periclean Athens, Renaissance Italy and then bury our noses in the ordure of sanctity given off by charismatic Victorian religious sectaries. Excursions into geological time are placed in counterpoint to diaristic jottings describing Tunnock's own erotic misadventures and the millennial trivia of the Anthony Linton Blair Government's final five years. 'Only Gray can be fecklessly sexy as well as insidiously sagacious. Only Gray can beguile quite so limpidly. If I were a Hollywood screenwriter (which, to the best of my knowledge, I am not), I would pitch the film adaptation of Old Men in Love thus: 'Imagine Lanark meets Something Leather, with a kind of a Poor Things feel to it ' By this I mean to convey to this novel's readers that Alasdair Gray remains, first and foremost, entirely sui generis. He's the very best Alasdair Gray that we have, and we should cherish his works accordingly.' - Will Self

'Alasdair Gray is that rather rare bird among contemporary British writers - a genuine experimentalistThe influence of James Joyce, and Laurence Sterne, is very evident, but Gray does not seem merely derivative from these masters. He is very much his own man.' David Lodge 'He is our nearest contemporary equivalent to Blake, our sweetest-natured screwed-up visionary' Evening Standard 'A great writer, perhaps the greatest living in Britain today' Will Self

Alasdair Gray is the author of the Whitbread and Guardian Prize-winning novel Poor Things and the story-collection Ten Tales Tall and True.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780747593539
ISBN 10	0747593531
Title	Old Men in Love
Author	Alasdair Gray
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Year published	2007-10-01
Number of pages	320
Prizes	Short-listed for The Clare Maclean Prize for Scottish Fiction 2007
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable