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Loading... The Ends of Our Tethers: 13 Sorry Stories (2003)by Alasdair Gray
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.  greeniezona | Dec 6, 2017 |   Gray’s narrators tend to have an air of detachment about them and it is unsurprising that their relationships are dysfunctional. Some have especially unfortunate habits. Job’s Skin Game’s narrator is so fascinated by his own eczema he subject his scabs to almost Linnaean levels of classification. Of the other stories that do not focus on marriage Aiblins features the suppression by an academic of a younger poet’s works and acts partly as a device to smuggle in some of Gray’s own (accomplished) poetry which he nevertheless deconstructs in typical Gray fashion. Wellbeing is about the necessity of not being sane in our crazy world and Big Pockets With Buttoned Flaps is an unusual erotic preference. 15 February 2003 is not so much a story as an account of an anti-Iraq war march. Here Gray mentions that the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia at the time of the Suez crisis in 1956. He is confusing this with the invasion of Hungary in that year. The (crushed) Prague Spring was in 1968. With its illustrations of disconnection mixed with the odd desultory polemic, as an introduction to Gray’s world view this collection couldn’t be bettered. (  ) jackdeighton | Dec 28, 2011 |
A most curious collection of semiautobiographical stories. The best of these pieces memorably evoke … the vagaries of aging, failing, compromising, compensating, and surrendering. Readers unfamiliar with Gray may find them annoyingly self-indulgent and pallid. Those who know his work are likelier to accept them as quirky roughhewn fragments of an agreeably eccentric ongoing fictional autobiography. Is contained in
Since 1981, when Alasdair Gray's first novelLanark 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, wide-ranging 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 September 11th attacks and his fortune in the dot-com 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 once-revered 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. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813Literature English (North America) American fictionLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.38)
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Wikipedia in English (1)
5
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 well-meaning) 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 non-standard blocking of the stories. You will not confuse this book for any other book. (