Swing Hammer Swing - Hardcover

Torrington, Jeff

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151874271 ISBN 13: 9780151874279

Publisher: Harcourt Brace International, 1994

Synopsis

Jeff Torrington's startlingly original first novel is set in Glasgow, Scotland, during a single-week in the late sixties. Christmas is approaching, and Thomas Clay is beset with mounting problems: his wife is in the maternity hospital prematurely; he's waiting for news of their transfer to "Legoland" high-rise housing - or for his tenement to be demolished beneath his very feet; he has no job, and his novel is, as yet, unpublished. Staggering from crisis to crisis, Thomas Clay is a man pursued - by petty gangsters, his Mafia-like in-laws, a doppelganger, and by time itself. He may imagine he has evaded the tyranny of clocks by escaping the nine-to-five, but no matter how fast he runs, the Grim Reaper seems cold on his heels.

About 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 seriously good novel. Critics have rightly claimed that he does for Glasgow what James Joyce did for Dublin' - Stephen Pile, Daily Telegraph

About this edition

• Publisher: Harcourt Brace International
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0151874271
• ISBN 13: 9780151874279
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416