Word: lanark
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Lanark,” Alasdair Gray’s hefty first novel, is often called the “Scottish Ulysses.” The term is a reductive one, a kind of shorthand for any book that comes from the edges of the British Isles, documents the internal struggles of a young man, and experiments heavily with form. Granted, this may seem like a rather limited class of books; but no category, however specific, can hold this novel: though Gray—as much as any modern writer—owes a debt to Joyce, “Lanark?...
Interestingly, Gray chooses to enclose this achievement of realism within a frame narrative that is pure fantasy. The story of Lanark, a young amnesiac who inhabits a strange, dystopian world, neatly bookends Thaw’s. The two narratives never directly intersect: to Lanark, Thaw is only a character in a story told to him in a hospital (admittedly, a story that takes up two hundred pages...