Product Description

Duncan Thaw, the narrator, has to cope with a loveless family and the drudgery of growing to maturity in Glasgow. Elsewhere the author moves Thaw into fantasy when he sends him to Unthank, a city he is condemned to after his death. From the author of "Something Leather".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #117194 in Books
• Published on: 1991-08-23
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 576 pages

Review
Bulk alone - 560 or so pages - signals Scottish first-novelist Gray's determination: he means to make a detailed, leisurely analogue to today, to set it in a future-world city much like Glasgow called Unthank (where there is no natural light), and to place the whole thing around an historical mystery man named Lanark. Lanark, suffering from a throwback skin disease called "dragonhide," is sent for treatment to the Institute, a hospital/research-center/university where human ecology has been strictly perfected: cured patients in turn become doctors; selective cannibalism un-kinks the food chain. But Lanark, along with pregnant girlfriend Rima, can't abide the strictures (which resemble an exaggerated modern-day British social-welfare bureaucracy); they escape and wander the "intracalendrical zones" where time and space are askew. True, Gray pulls up short for the next two or three hundred pages and interjects the autobiographical travails of an asthmatic, unhappy Glasgow art student named Duncan Thaw; and then, still later, there's a disarming intermezzo in which Gray cheerfully acknowledges and catalogues the writers and books from whom he is borrowing and lifting. But apart from these genial emperor's-new-clothes, the main of Gray's big metaphorical structure is built on fantasy. And though this construct has its moments - Lanark's and Rima's relationship is more rancorously realistic than usual in the genre, and some of the speculation (like a time credit-card that substitutes for money by simply deducting from the cardholder's life span) is diverting - it never even comes close to cohering. The eye (unlike Wyndham Lewis' in The Human Age), instead of being scathing, is more simply chafed; there's a sharp edge here, but it glints only once in a long while. Some appeal for fanciers of grand-scale sociological futurescapes, then, with more ambition than real imagination or power. (Kirkus Reviews)

Customer Reviews

Wow
Lanark is, in so many ways, a straight forward tale of two people-who may or may not be one and the same- struggling through their difficult lives. Gray, however, has taken these two tales and twisted them mesmerically together and in doing so has undoubtedly produced one of the most original and exciting novels ever. Lanark, under the pen of any other author, would be two fairly regular stories, but Gray's wit and skill has turned it into something breath-taking. His epilogue in particular showcases his intelligence and arrogance as a writer. A real must-read.

A life in one book
Quite simple really - my favourite book of all time. Nothing pretentious about my praise: a stunning, complex, irritatingly-difficult and brilliant book. I first read it in October 1982 and have worn out my copy by over ten readings. But enough of reading my rubbish - read it!

Interesting And Bleak
'Lanark' clearly has some moments of greatness (namely the 'Epilogue'), but I couldn't help but have a niggling feeling that there was something I just wasn't getting. I'm sure it probably is a great book, I just don't think I took the time to get it. Why am I writing a review then? Well, everyone else seems to love it so I thought I'd show some difference of opinion. Duncan Thaw is good, but no Prentice McHoan!