Old Men in Love: John Tunnock's Posthumous Papers
By (Author) Alasdair Gray
Small Beer Press
Big Mouth House
1st June 2010
United States
General
Fiction
Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary
FIC
Hardback
312
Width 152mm, Height 228mm, Spine 25mm
609g
Beautiful, inventive, ambitious and nuts.The Times (London)
Our nearest contemporary equivalent to Blake, our sweetest-natured screwed-up visionary.London Evening Standard
Alasdair Grays unique melding of humor and metafiction at once hearken back to Laurence Sterne and sit beside todays literary mash-ups with equal comfort. Old Men in Love is smart, down-to-earth, funny, bawdy, politically inspired, dark, multi-layered, and filled with the kind of intertextual play that Gray delights in.
As with Grays previous novel Poor Things, several partial narratives are presented together. Here the conceit is that they were all discovered in the papers of the late John Tunnock, a retired Glasgow teacher who started a number of novels in settings as varied as Periclean Athens, Renaissance Florence, Victorian Somerset, and Britain under New Labour.
This is the first US edition (updated with the authors corrections from the UK edition) of a novel that British critics lauded as one of the best of Grays long career. Beautifully printed in two colors throughout and featuring Grays trademark strong design, Old Men in Love will stand out from everything else on the shelf. Fifty percent is fact and the rest is possible, but it must be read to be believed.
Alasdair Gray is one of Scotlands most well-known and acclaimed artists. He is the author of nine novels, including Lanark, 1982 Janine, and the Whitbread and Guardian Prizewinning Poor Things, as well as four collections of stories, two collections of poetry, and three books of nonfiction, including The Book of Prefaces. He lives in Glasgow, Scotland.
"Like the best of Gray's work, Old Men in Love is funny and profane, but with a shuddering anger to the politics." --Jessa Crispin, NPR "Beautiful, inventive, ambitious and nuts." --The London Times "Our nearest contemporary equivalent to Blake, our sweetest-natured screwed-up visionary." --Evening Standard "Gray, it seems, is unwilling to muck about with a good formula... A work of some genius." --Independent on Sunday "The culmination of a lifetime spent honing his unique ideas and approach." --New Statesman "One of Alasdair Gray's best novels... A fine book by the Dickens of Glasgow." --The Independent "Ingenious, engaging." --Times Literary Supplement
Alasdair Gray is one of Scotland's most well-known and acclaimed artists. He is the author of nine novels, including Lanark, 1982 Janine, and the Whitbread and Guardian Prize-winning Poor Things, as well as four collections of stories, two collections of poetry, and three books of nonfiction, including The Book of Prefaces. He lives in Glasgow, Scotland.