Swing Hammer Swing! - Softcover
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.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
"A gamey, pungent, vulgar sprawl of a novel, somewhere in the hinterland where Damon Runyon meets James Joyce" (Observer)
"Swing Hammer Swing! is a great novel" (James Kelman)
"A crazily good read... this [is a] fantastic first novel" (Scotland on Sunday)
"It is such a good novel, with such energy of language and gift for striking off memorable scenes, that its appearance at any time would be welcomed . . . It prompts reflection on how much it would have benefited Scottish writers if 20 years ago a novel had been published with Jeff Torrington's absolute lack of compromise or temporising explanation in the use of Glasgow material and dialect" (The Scotsman)
"This might be the Gorbals, and the banter might be exchanged on the steps of tramp-haunted urinals, but the reference points are Nietzsche, Pascal, Chekhov and Sartre'" (Independent)
Book Description:
"Swing Hammer Swing! is a great novel" (James Kelman)
"A crazily good read... this [is a] fantastic first novel" (Scotland on Sunday)
"It is such a good novel, with such energy of language and gift for striking off memorable scenes, that its appearance at any time would be welcomed . . . It prompts reflection on how much it would have benefited Scottish writers if 20 years ago a novel had been published with Jeff Torrington's absolute lack of compromise or temporising explanation in the use of Glasgow material and dialect" (The Scotsman)
"This might be the Gorbals, and the banter might be exchanged on the steps of tramp-haunted urinals, but the reference points are Nietzsche, Pascal, Chekhov and Sartre'" (Independent)
'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
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- ISBN 10 0099575418
- ISBN 13 9780099575412
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages416
- Rating
(No Available Copies)
Search Books: Create a WantIf you know the book but cannot find it on AbeBooks, we can automatically search for it on your behalf as new inventory is added. If it is added to AbeBooks by one of our member booksellers, we will notify you!
Create a Want