Receive Your Copy The Ends Of Our Tethers: Thirteen Sorry Stories: Thirteen Sorry Stories Penned By Alasdair Gray Presented As Printable Format
writing that hits home, With awkward moments and uncomfortable emotions negotiated with aplomb, Anybody who thinks that Irvine Welsh is a true literary original has never read anything by Alasdair Gray, That said, he's one of those authors that, in general, I respect more than I actually enjoy reading, When he gets bits of text interweaving in little boxes all backwards and upsidedown, it's a wee bit too conceptually rigorous for me,
He writes great short stories, though, and you'll find plenty of them in here, The one on his contemporary retelling of the story of Job is particularly good, There's also plenty of not so subtle but intelligently delivered commentary about Blairera Britain and Gray's raging contempt for it,
The other thing I love about all of Gray's books is the blurbs in the back, Most authors only include positive raves for their work, A few might toss in a negative review just to be funny, Gray includes them all, from the most asskissingly hyperbolic praise of his champions in the British press to those reviewers who see him as a talentless hack deserving of an extremely painful and drawnout death.
Sometimes the reviews of his books make for more entertaining reading than the books themselves, . .
But this one is great, And he also draws some pretty funny pictures, . . I just wasn't in the right frame of mind for this, I'd give him another shot, Gray is constantly surprising mewhenever I consign him to the dustbin of mediocrity, he returns with a superb collection of short fiction, After a sevenyear absence where he worked as a writing professor in Glasgow, he returned refreshed with thirteen tales about senility, creativity and politics, No Bluebeard is the longest: an account of the narrators three marriages based on Grays shaky relationship history and his marriage to a steely Scandinavian who shared her name with Olympic Danish swimmer Inge Sorensen.
Boasts the most awkward use of the C word in a piece of fiction outside Updike, Also notable is Aiblins about a deranged poet who tries blackmailing his old tutor into getting his work published through braggart posing, Jobs Skin Game is the best story about recurring eczema youre likely to read outside Updike and brims with scabby mischief, The other pieces here are brief, memorable, bittersweet and perfect, Gray is a little grey deity,
Black humour mainly about the business of getting older and gradually falling apart, Since, when Alasdair Gray's first novel Lanark was published by Canongate, his characters have aged as fast as their author, The Ends of Our Tethers shows the high jinks of many folk in the last stages of physical, moral and social decrepitude a sure tonic for the young.
The first work of fiction in over six years by one of Britain's most original and brilliant writers, this wonderful and very funny new collection reaffirms Gray's position as a master of the short story.
The Ends of Our Tethers is vintage Gray experimental, mischievous, wideranging but also subtly connected, And as always the work is hallmarked with his highly engaging prose style, dry wit and fecund imagination, These thirteen tales challenge prejudice, question social imbalances and explore human foibles,
In 'No Bluebeard', a socially reclusive man, veteran of three marriages, meets a disturbed and eccentric woman desperate to remain hidden from her family, In 'Job's Skin Game' a father develops a skin condition in response to the emotional shock of losing his two sons in the Septemberth attacks and his fortune in the dotcom crisis.
The exquisite pleasure he takes from scratching and peeling his dead epidermis becomes his sole preoccupation and a metaphor for what is ultimately a wholly sane response to tragedy.
'Wellbeing' offers a politically charged dystopian vision of a future Britain as seen through the eyes of a oncerevered writer, now homeless yet stubbornly refusing to move to a more hospitable country as 'there are better ways of living than being happy, but they require strength and sanity.
'
Beautifully produced and illustrated throughout with Gray's distinctive drawings, this is an important and highly accessible collection, This little book is one of my favorite finds ever in the used book section at Schulers, I was expecting to
find no Alasdair Gray, I was just looking to feel superior or deprived, I suppose, but instead I found two books! Now I know I've mentioned that the short story is not my favorite format, but I needed a short story collection for the book bingo challenge at work, and Alasdair Gray should certainly make it more interesting.
For the most part excepting the last story, this is Gray separated from all his big speculative fiction concepts, There are no portals to other worlds here, no women reanimated from spare parts, Aside from that, they remain true to the themes of Gray's work tortured but usually wellmeaning relationships between men and women, class and politics, art's place in the world.
. .
It's a wonderful little book, Some of the stories are quite strange, yes, full of outsiders and holders of unpopular opinions, Although each story features someone at the end of their tether in some way, for the most part these are people struggling to make the best of whatever the situation they are in.
Most of them find a kind of peace, even if it is a sad peace,
Finally, I love the object of the book itself, Its strange little illustrations and the nonstandard blocking of the stories, You will not confuse this book for any other book, Alasdair Gray is probably my favourite living writer, I highly rate his novels and his plays, but his short stories I especially adore, and in fact Unlikely Stories Mostly is one of the best short story collections I have ever read by anyone, and one story from that collection, 'Five Letters from an Eastern Empire', remains the best short story I have ever read.
It must be clear, therefore, that I am happy to read all his story collections whenever I can get my hands on them,
The Ends of Our Tethers is good, for the simple reason that I don't truly believe there is a bad Alasdair Gray book out there, but it must be said that readers new to his work should perhaps not enter his oeuvre at this point.
Yes, it is good, but it is not spectacular, Yet for me, there is a little discussed phenomenon at play here, When one loves a writer so much that one decides to become a completist regarding that writer, one is often propelled smoothly and enjoyably across his lesser works by the sheer momentum of one's admiration for the best works.
My reading of the stories in The Ends of Our Tethers is influenced and perhaps even entirely informed by my reading of those other Gray stories that I regard as utterly superb.
In other words, for this completist who is necessarily a devotee there can be no objective evaluation,
Another thing. The production values of Gray's books are always excellent, He designs them himself and he is a true artist, The old adage is "never judge a book by its cover" but when the covers are as wonderful as those created by Gray, when the interiors are perfectly proportioned, when the pages are elevated by his illustrations, when the typesetting is so pleasing and symmetrical with some elegant archaic touches such as the narrowing to a point at the end of a story, when the print is nice and big and easy on the eyes of this ageing reader, then I am automatically going to be biased towards that book, irrespective of the quality of the prose inside.
I am pleased to say that Gray's prose here is tremendous, but I repeat my earlier warning to readers new to him, Begin your journey into Gray's short stories with one of his earlier collections, .