The Deadman's Pedal - Hardcover

Warner, Alan

3.91

199 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 022407170X ISBN 13: 9780224071703

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 2012

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It is the early 1970s in the Highlands of Scotland and for 16-year-old Simon Crimmons there's really not much to do. He can hang around with his pals or his first-ever girlfriend, Nikki, he can dream about a first motorbike to get him out of the Port and among the hills, but in truth he's going nowhere.

The only local drama and romance is provided by the rural railway, and Simon ends up working on the trains by chance, thrown into a community of jaded older men. But that summer he is introduced to a world far more glamorous and strange. He meets the louche, bohemian Alex, and his dark, gorgeous sister, Varie: all that remains of 'the doomed family' of the great house at Broken Moan, where their father, Andrew Bultitude, is Commander of the Pass. When Simon falls in love with the otherworldly Varie he is suddenly given a freedom and mobility that is both thrilling and vertiginous.

With The Deadman's Pedal, Alan Warner returns to the landscapes of Morvern Callar and his early novels: a world where the real and the surreal, grim trade unionists and the crazed aristocracy, live under the shadows of the same great mountains, along the same railway line. A demented comedy, a wild romantic fling - The Deadman's Pedal is another thrillingly imagined adventure by one of our finest novelists.

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Review:

Warner's new novel, The Deadman's Pedal, amply fulfills his talent.an exceptionally fine novel by any standards. Warner's language is deliriously vivid. The Deadman's Pedal is morally sensitive, exquisitely written and emotionally mature. It could not be mistaken for a book by any other author: Warner has triumphantly come into his own (Stuart Kelly Guardian)

He's never written better. The Deadman's Pedal is a novel that will last. This is the best Scottish fiction since Lanark (Brian Morton Scottish Review of Books)

Filled with rich predicament, where parallel lives collide in a creative undoing of the status quo... Anyone who reads it must be grateful that The Deadman's Pedal is the first of a trilogy, and hope that Warner writes quickly (Sheena Joughin Sunday Telegraph)

Compelling.the patterns of Warner's grand design emerge, as mesmerising as the highland scenery he describes with such sublime intensity (Peter Carty Independent)

The prose achieves rhythms and textures of ecstatic beauty, the images are often mesmerising (the descriptions of Simon's oddly peaceful train journeys within the "endarkened cell" of the driver's cab are especially good), the dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the characterisation is vigorous throughout. The Deadman's Pedal is a lovely novel, and a return to form on the part of one of Scotland's most brilliant writers (Edmund Gordon Sunday Times)

Book Description:

A bildungsroman, a demented comedy, a wild romantic fling - The Deadman's Pedal is another thrillingly imagined adventure from the inimitable Alan Warner.

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