Product Description

This has become a classic of Glasgow fiction, depicting every aspect of life in the city. Its thirteen interlinked stories vividly evokes the slums and their inhabitants, both the young and old, Catholic and Protestant, the hopeful and the disillusioned.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #275097 in Books
• Published on: 1996-10-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Customer Reviews

Timeless, Peerless Book
I read this in 1983, whiling away a few empty hours in the sadly demised Stirling Library in Glasgow.

It's a beautiful, touching collection of stories, apparently autobiographical, which conjure up a working-class Glasgow still very much industrially focussed. Kibble Palace and other stories bring the city to life, and the characters move you to laughter and tears in equal measure. Blue in particular is stunning.

When I moved to London a few years later, when I was homesick I read this.....no other book reminds you of home, and community, like it. Every Glaswegian should read it.

A marvellous book.
I have read both Alan Spence's novels and his later book of short stories but this is the book (first published in 1997 and his first work) where he hits perfection. I have never read a better depiction of the Glasgow that I knew.