From Publishers Weekly
Gray, the Scottish author of the novels Lanark and the Whitbread-winning Poor Things, among others, returns to the form he first visited in Unlikely Stories, Mostly with a collection filled with wry and mordant humor. In these 13 stories, Gray dances across many of the discontents of modern life, but lingers at the divides of gender and age. Set mainly in Glasgow during the present day, the talesâ€"many so short they're more like sharp, eccentric sketchesâ€"feature characters and narrators who observe their world with a mixture of wistfulness and disappointment. "Big Pockets with Button Flaps" opens with a pair of teenage girls trading banter with an old man with odd, semisexual proclivities and closes with a series of reversals in situation and power. In "No Bluebeard," a man recounts his three failed marriages and the unexpected surrender that led to a successful fourth ("It is almost impossible to judge the intelligence of someone from an alien culture so I have never discovered exactly how stupid or mad Tilda is"). In "Miss Kincaid's Autumn," a brother and sister live together far more harmoniously than most married couples, while "Aiblins" centers on the frustrating interactions between an established poet and the young, half-crazed upstart who may or may not be the genius he claims to be. This is a book with a sneaky, cumulative power; the prose is as spare and provocative as the illustrations of leering demon skulls and sly young women drawn by Gray himself.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Accosted by teen thugs, a man "no longer young" seems in for it; then "the smaller, more dangerous-looking youth" recognizes his old teacher; though safe, the man "smiles rather wistfully at the tall youth's combat trousers." Another man shelters a strange young woman fleeing her family; tolerating her profound peculiarities because she's good in bed, he eventually marries her, after which she refuses to sleep with him; he sifts through his three previous marriages for a clue to what it is about him. An author teaching creative writing meets an eccentric young poet who spurns all coaching and then disappears, only to resurface, beaten-looking, years later, demanding that the writer get his original manuscript published, even if under the writer's name; more years pass, and the poet shows up again, yet more decrepit--has the writer's refusal to help driven him insane? At least two persons seem to have reached tether's end in each of the amusingly distressing new stories by the author of the modern Scots classic Lanark (1981). Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
The Ends of Our Tethers is the first work of fiction in seven years by Alasdair Gray. Wonderful and often very funny, this new collection reaffirms Gray as a master of the short story. In "No Bluebeard," a reclusive man, the veteran of three marriages, meets a disturbed and eccentric woman desperate to remain hidden from her family. In "Job's Skin Game," a man develops a skin condition in response to losing his two sons in the Twin Towers and his fortune in the dot-com meltdown. The exquisite pleasure he derives from scratching and peeling his dead epidermis becomes his sole preoccupation. "Well-being" offers a politically charged dystopian vision of a future Britain as seen through the eyes of a once-revered writer. He is now homeless yet stubbornly refuses to move to a more hospitable country: "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, The Ends of Our Tethers is vintage Gray-accessible, experimental, mischievous, wide-ranging, beautifully written, and wise.
The Ends of Our Tethers: 13 Sorry Stories FROM THE PUBLISHER
The Ends of Our Tethers is the first work of fiction in seven years by Alasdair Gray Wonderful and often very funny, this new collection reaffirms Gray as a master of the short story. In "No Bluebeard," a reclusive man, the veteran of three marriages, meets a disturbed and eccentric woman desperate to remain hidden from her family. In "Job's Skin Game," a man develops a skin condition in response to losing his two sons in the Twin Towers and his fortune in the dot-com meltdown. The exquisite pleasure he derives from scratching and peeling his dead epidermis becomes his sole preoccupation. "Well-being" offers a politically charged dystopian vision of a future Britain as seen through the eyes of a once-revered writer. He is now homeless yet stubbornly refuses to move to a more hospitable country: "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, The Ends of Our Tethers is vintage Gray-accessible, experimental, mischievous, wide-ranging, beautifully written, and wise.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Gray, the Scottish author of the novels Lanark and the Whitbread-winning Poor Things, among others, returns to the form he first visited in Unlikely Stories, Mostly with a collection filled with wry and mordant humor. In these 13 stories, Gray dances across many of the discontents of modern life, but lingers at the divides of gender and age. Set mainly in Glasgow during the present day, the tales many so short they're more like sharp, eccentric sketches feature characters and narrators who observe their world with a mixture of wistfulness and disappointment. "Big Pockets with Button Flaps" opens with a pair of teenage girls trading banter with an old man with odd, semisexual proclivities and closes with a series of reversals in situation and power. In "No Bluebeard," a man recounts his three failed marriages and the unexpected surrender that led to a successful fourth ("It is almost impossible to judge the intelligence of someone from an alien culture so I have never discovered exactly how stupid or mad Tilda is"). In "Miss Kincaid's Autumn," a brother and sister live together far more harmoniously than most married couples, while "Aiblins" centers on the frustrating interactions between an established poet and the young, half-crazed upstart who may or may not be the genius he claims to be. This is a book with a sneaky, cumulative power; the prose is as spare and provocative as the illustrations of leering demon skulls and sly young women drawn by Gray himself. (Apr.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A most curious collection of semiautobiographical stories, from the veteran Scots author (the Whitbread-winner Poor Things, 1993; etc.) and graphic artist. The tales feature different protagonists and narrators, but the dominant one is a long-married (sometimes divorced) male approaching old age, taking stock of his (disappointing) life, and drawing resentful contrasts between vigorous youth and enfeebled age. There are terse, flimsy vignettes like "Pillow Talk," which portrays a husband trying to goad his wife into leaving him; a memory of "failures of common decency" that blighted a schoolboy's childhood ("Sinkings"); and a description of a peace march ("15 February 2003") that's only an excuse for lambasting Bush-and-Blair's Iraq policies. Several stories address the volume's themes more directly, and resonant more strongly. "No Bluebeard" is a serial husband's account of his failures with three spouses ("because I had been constantly mean and ungenerous, cold and calculating")-and his compatible fourth marriage to a deranged woman, in flight from her controlling family, whose neediness binds him to her. "Job's Skin Game' presents the musings of a successful building contractor who loses his sons to the 9/11 disaster, alienates his grieving wife, then develops a pernicious disfiguring eczema-the physical symptoms of which excite and gratify his imagination. And in "Aiblins," a poet and writing teacher recalls relationships with promising, and troublesome students: notably, an insufferably arrogant, demanding, and increasingly paranoid "genius." This latter story is an especially insidiously persuasive expression of the vagaries of aging, failing, compromising, compensating, andsurrendering that the best of these pieces memorably evoke. 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. Let Gray be Gray, and he won't disappoint you.
Art & Photography
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