Our Fathers

by Andrew O'Hagan

First Canadian publication of the powerful debut novel from the author of Be Near Me.Finalist for the Man Booker Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the Whitbread Award.Hugh Bawn was a modern hero, a visionary urban planner, a man of the people who revolutionized Scotland’s residential development after the Second World War. But times have changed. Now, as he lies dying in one of his own failed buildings, his grandson Jamie comes home to watch over him. The old man’s final months bring Jamie to see what is best and worst in the past that haunts them all, and he sees the fears of his own life unravel in the land that bred him.It is Jamie who tells the story of his family, of three generations of pride and delusion, of nationality and strong drink, of Catholic faith and the end of political idealism. It is a tale of dark hearts and modern houses, of three men in search of Utopia. A poignant and powerful reclamation of the past, Our Fathers is a deeply felt, beautifully crafted, utterly unforgettable novel.

Genres: Fiction, Scotland, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature, Politics, British Literature

Paperback

First published March 15, 1999

About the author

Andrew O'Hagan, FRSL (born 1968) is a Scottish novelist and non-fiction author.

He is the author of the novels Our Fathers, Personality, and Be Near Me, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His work has appeared in the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and The Guardian (UK). In 2003, O’Hagan was named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. He lives in London, England.

Reviews

[Connie G · Rating 3 out of 5]

James Bawn visits his dying grandfather, Hugh Bawn, in his Ayrshire apartment. Hugh was called "Mr Housing" when he was in charge of building high-rise apartments for low income residents in southwestern Scotland after World War II. Some substandard materials were used in the crumbling buildings, and James now works for a demolition company that is destroying them so the next generation can rebuild. Hugh was a mentor and a father-figure for James when it became impossible for James to live with his violent alcoholic father, Robert.

The family had Irish roots, a Catholic faith, a problem with alcohol, and a history of helping the poor through their left-wing politics. James helps his grandfather in his last days, and comforts his grandmother who is devastated by Hugh's passing. He also takes the first steps in reconciliation with his father. Robert, the son of Mr Housing, has rejected his father's ideas and resides in a tiny caravan in a field.

I didn't feel much of a connection to the characters until the end of the book. I enjoyed the parts where there was some action, moving the characters out of the grandparents' apartment. While some of the author's literary prose was beautiful, there were also descriptions in short, choppy sentences and sentence fragments that got tiresome. Overall, I had mixed feelings about this story of family conflict.

[Argos · Rating 3 out of 5]

İskoç yazar O'Hagan bu romanında bir ailenin dört kuşağının temelde sosyal bilincini anlatıyor. Anlatıcımız Jamie Bawn'ın büyükbabası Hugh (Bay Konut) sosyalisttir ve kendini halk için gökdelen şeklinde halk konutları yapmaya adamıştır . Jamie de bu binalar nedeniyle soruşturma geçiren büyükbabasının başında haftalarca süren bir nöbeti ile kendisini büyükbabasına adar. Jamie ayrıca kendisinden nefret eden kaba ve ayyaş olan babası Robert'ı ve Birinci Dünya Savaşı sırasında Glasgow'un kiralık evlerinde kira grevlerine önderlik eden Hugh'un annesi, ailenin ilk sosyalisti Effie'yi hatırladığı kadarıyla romanda anlatır.

Romanda ayrıca İngiltere ile İskoçya geçimsizliği ve karşılıklı nefreti, İskoçya’da nesillerce süren gurur, depresyon, milliyetçilik, katolik inancın katılığı ve ve idealist-ütopik sol değerleri de anlatır.

Yazar çok kısa cümleler kullanıyor, geriye dönüşlere(flashback) çok sık başvuruyor. Öykü biraz sıkıcı anlatılmış ama daha önemlisi çok savruk. Olay örgüsü karışık, okurken dağılıyor insan. Kitabın adı neden “babalarımız” olmuş bunu da pek anlamadım, çünkü en baskın karakterler anlatıcı dışında Hugh ve eşi Margareth ve büyük-büyükanne Effie bence. Neticede pek sarmadı beni, çeviri de başarılı sayılmaz.

[Justin Evans · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really liked 'Be Near Me,' and this was truly disappointing. It was lauded by reviewers, and it's easy to see why. It deals seriously with serious themes, and when it's just doing that it's actually very good.
But the style... dear lord in heaven. As we look back on the worst excesses of romantic prose, so shall our grandchildren look back on the worst excesses of 'modernist' prose. And they're all here. Sentences without verbs. They’re the subject of the following sentence. Sometimes. No links between phrases, no temporal progression, no clauses. Each verbal unit stands alone. Short and 'powerful.' All this stated in a matter-of-fact manner. No excrescences. A sudden, unexplained torrent of emotion and sentiment is expressed in a nature metaphor. The emotion always grief. The metaphor seems fresh, insightful, stunning. The poetry of it is breathtaking. So are the descriptive passages full of color and life. But this is a lie. Only the sterility of the remaining prose gives this effect. The metaphor and the description are as hackneyed as anything the worst late romantic could erect.
Let us remember the beauty of syntax every now and then, and the benefits of clauses. Perhaps, too, we could take a break from novels of self-pity masquerading as self-criticism- I'm looking at you, Netherlands, and you, Philip Roth.

[ariana · Rating 5 out of 5]

there is something exceptionally magical about literature…. how a book published before you were born will explain parts of your life still sore to touch way better than you ever could… pacing and prose both beautiful and devastating. andrew o hagan…. i ily you……..your words are repeating on me

[Catherine Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️ would have perhaps enjoyed it more if the metaphors weren’t quite as heavy handed

[Neil Meehan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes overwrought, often sentimental, I struggled early in this uneven, multi-generational portrait of difficult men and determined women in a west coast family. The centring of the plot on a legend of local authority housing and planning tends to wear a bit thin at times, but it comes together. I prefer O’Hagan’s non fiction but this is an impressive debut that belies an author in his late 20s writing it.

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of those novels where all the ingredients are right yet the whole doesn't come off. The style is overblown and there are a few buried jabs at James Kelman too many.

[Kevin Tole · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first came across Andrew O'Hagan in a piece written for the London Review of Books(a journal he worked for as a staff writer and now as an editor), an appraisal of the work of another great Scottish contemporary writer, James Kelman (https://www.lrb.co.uk/v16/n10/andrew-...). The review of How late it was, how late was both laudatory from one Scottish writer to another and at the same time a dig at Kelman, saying how he wrote of a world that was past, that the characters and the people he populated his work with were no longer a part of modern life in Scotland. This felt a bit of a slap in the face given the high regard I personally have for Kelman which is to a greater degree a reflection of his place in the canon of contemporary writing.

So a good place to start with O’Hagan is his first published novel 'Our Fathers', nominated for both the Booker and the Whitbread prizes and as contemporary a Scottish writer as Kelman with the book covering what could be seen as superficially similar themes. 'Our Fathers' concerns three generations and more of the Bawn family all living and intimately connected to Glasgow and Ayrshire. Thomas the grandfather known as ‘Mr Housing’ was responsible for the building of the high-rises throughout Glasgow and Ayrshire to house the overspill and provide homes to those unhoused with the razing of Glasgow’s slum tenements at the end of WWII. Married to Margaret who came from the Highlands with her own memories of Ireland, he is his own man, the only son of Euphemia Bawn, working class suffragette and rent strike organiser in WWI, politicised in old Labour and socialist to the core. Hugh’s own son is Rab, an alcoholic and violent man barely holding it together who in turn is violently married to Alice. Their union gave rise to the grandson James. It is James who is the narrator through the book which is split into seven chapters, but it is the life of Hugh that the book concerns itself most with.

Ayrshire, and particularly North Ayrshire, really is the bumhole of the West of Scotland. Sticking out like the J Lo's arse on the aft end of Renfrewshire (itself no mean contender for beauty and rejoicing as it does in the epithet of Glasgow’s Car Park), it contains those crap centres of ersatz summer and chip-‘n’-ice cream tourism complete with decrepit industry and housing . With its mix of agriculture and coast and overspill it has a high ranking in all the indices of deprivation – unemployment, addiction whether alcoholism or drugs, bellying underclass of unemployable neds, crap jobs when available in a gig economy which is making the world into an even worse place to live and exemplified in the decrepit seaside towns of Saltcoats (Bobby Lennox and boarded up buildings),Ardrossan (the only reason to visit is to catch the ferry to Arran), Irvine (the new town which rapidly became the shit town with a maritime museum and a big swimming pool), Kilwinning (Masonic centre-of-the-universe where King Billy Rides Again!), Troon (saved by the la-de-dah golf courses which few of the locals can afford or play on if they even wanted to), Prestwick (Glasgow’s ‘other’ airport and more zero hour minimum wage jobs). The best way to view Ayrshire is from a boat headed towards Paddy’s Mile Stane (Ailsa Craig). Further inland the coal and iron have gone to be replaced by the torn open land of giant open cast coal mining sites and landfill rubbish around hell-on-earth Cumnock. Indeed most of the jobs have gone – Compaq and Johnny Walker did massive runners throwing thousands out of work) and what remains is hard and uncompromising.

That pretty much sums up Hugh Bawn. His goal was to house everyone in upright cities in the sky. The Gorbals tenement slums fell to rapidly built tower blocks – home to some, unhealthy damp traps to others. And he was uncompromising in getting them built, bawling out contractors, fencing for cheaper materials, a master of the cash-in-hand deal. Lauded by most he retires after a long career of high rise building to the 18th floor of a tower block in Irvine where Margaret and himself end up living at opposite ends of the small flat in the sky. There they are till his health fails and back comes his grandson James, summoned from Liverpool where he is involved directly in the demolition of the towers his grandfather commissioned. The grandson James is really the son he never had. His own son, James’ father Rab, we see raging and punching and cursing and using his fists against his wife Alice till James leaves at the age of 13 to live with his grandparents in lieu of killing his father.

What we have is a framework to examine the lives of West Coast Scottish males and life in Scotland. O’Hagan’s writing is superb. Poetic in its nature and not necessaryily continuing with the direct sense but with an open mind for meaning and comprehension as the words come together in our heads. All the family are Catholic (lapsed or not) with a strong connection to Ireland. There is a real sense of place even of despair in their thoughts and words and deeds. In a relevant passage after Hugh’s death the son Rab revels with James, HIS son, that his grandfather’s favourite word was ‘fuck’ whilst the grandson opts for ‘Progress’ or ‘Deliverance’.

Rab IS the troubled West Coast Man. Emasculated by background and upbringing. Only a mind for football. No interest in the mighty schemes of his father Hugh and he is soon disowned by his father who sees nothing in him. Drink is his world. However he also has the ability of the common man to make others like him despite his violence and mania. All that is except his young son who sees him in all his moods and states of intoxication and self-hatred. The most illuminating part of the father-son relationship and explanation occurs almost at the end of the book where Rab is a recovering alcoholic and James tracks his down to a caravan and cab driving in Dumfries.

I don’t even know who you are,’ he said
‘I’m not a child any more.’
‘No. You’re not a child. You never were much like a child.’
‘But I was one, Robert. I was one.’
‘It’s an illness, Jamesie. I was sick. I was sick then. And I was sick long after. Call me all the names. Call me a bastard. But all I know is I’m fucking trying now. It’s a terrible thing to be hated...’
‘You hated your father long enough.’
He was upset now. Years of sorrow came into his eyes.
‘I didn’t hate him,’ he said. ‘I was never the son my da wanted. He wanted somebody he could mould – he wanted you. Your granda was a dreaming man. He needed people that could believe in his goals. I was no good for that. Maybe not good for much. But I didn’t hate the man. You’d be better to say I hated myself. My God, Jamie: your mother and me made our own judge and jury when we made you.’
I heard myself say the word sorry.
‘No it’s me that’s sorry,’ he said.

O’Hagan’s prose is poetic. Take for instance the ambiguity alone in the title ‘Our Fathers’ with its allusion to prayer. There is a raw beauty and a horror almost in the language of pain that throws up in every chapter. This is not an easy book to read in any sense because the pain and guilt drip off the pages. And that in itself makes you ask questions of the West Coast mentality.

Scotland again. We all spouted up in these valleys of mirth. Possible fools with bigots for fathers, losers for husbands and mean, mortal hours And only the prospect of living in their wake, and one day becoming just like them.

It is the West Coast condition. Or is it more than that? Is it the Human Condition? Why is Scotland and the West Coast in particular always portrayed as dour – the home of strong drink, violence, bigotry, depression and joblessness. It’s not all like this. How come we don't hear of the downright honesty, the openness, the sincerity? Even my bleak annihilation of Ayrshire above is a hackled out remnant of dire memory amongst a lusciousness of the Ayrshire raw hills and isolated beaches and strong friendships. Do we want, even desire to remember only the bleak? Is Scotland the biggest case of Second Child Syndrome going?

This is a fine book and an excellent first novel. One which will have more appeal to males rather than females (the females are ciphers throughout – both unwilling and willing victims other than the great grandmother Euphemia; and in which women play minor roles only, though we see James’ mother Alice rising from the embers to a blossoming second marriage and realisation of her potential). It is not without flaws. There are times when his poetry of prose lapses into the downright mundane – less Kelman, more Andrew Greig. O’Hagan has little cause to call out Kelman as worshipping the Scots Male Deceased or Not-Of-This-Time. He has used many of the themes Kelman has used. However this is a book which should go beyond Scotland as an examination of Male, yea even unto Human Psyche.

[Jennifer Mcarthur · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrew O’Hagan the man that you are.

Such a quietly beautiful read, that really delves into the generation of socialist men during the rebuilding of Glasgow during the 60s onwards. The creation of Hugh is so lifelike this could’ve very easily been part memoir, lying in that Ayrshire high rise his character is vivid.

Perfect blend of poetic Scottish historical fiction and generational examination, this will definitely stay in my mind for years to come.

[Craig Smillie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jamie Bawn returns to Ayrshire to spend the last weeks with his dying grandfather. And to see if he can make sense of his own past. Of a terrifying abusive alcoholic father with a lifestyle as low as the gutter and a grandfather who was a municipal improver with a reputation as towering as the tower blocks he hastily threw up in the sixties as the new dream of working class living. Jamie struggles to emerge from the wreckage and debris of these lives. O’Hagan’s portrayal of the brutal, bullying fathers of the title are painfully, yet humanely constructed, but the character of the narrator remains curiously concealed - part of that phenomenological conundrum where, while we may see clearly what is going on around us, the self remains a mystery. No matter how long we spend gazing into the mirror to find ourselves, the image remains unfamiliar and mysterious. As a result, O’Hagan’s language resorts to poetry - and beautiful poetry - as the young man seeks to grasp what cannot be known. The language is often staggeringly beautiful. (e.g. the description of his granny knitting.) (Some may call this “over-writing”, but as a Kerouac fan I think that anything that is not “overwritten” is not worth reading. If it’s prosaic, I could have done it myself...)

The female characters diminish themselves to almost nothing in order to accomodate the huge, inflated egos of their partners. The granny puts her Scottish Colourist prints and dreams of the possibilities of a bright Modernist world in a cardboard box under her bed. “She rarely goes out.” Jamie’s mother puts her life on hold and patiently suffers her man’s ravings and his fists. Jamie’s own partner terminates her pregnancy since he is unsure whether he will make a good father himself. This is the tragedy of Scottish life, where for many men the dream is only of drink and for women that he will come home in a good mood.

But the experience for Jamie is healing and hopeful.

Highly recommended.

[manasa k · Rating 4 out of 5]

andrew o'hagan's writing rly does it for me mainly because he is so so good at writing fully realized people. i still think about mayflies all the time. this is almost as good!

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was 1999's Booker shortlist the strongest of the century? It certainly puts up a fierce frontline, with O'Hagan's story of poisonous paterfamilias one of the several strong contenders from this year. I wasn't sure for much of 'Our Fathers' that this was going to be the case. It's one of those where the writing is absolutely gorgeous to the point where all the frills of its poetry felt like they could obscure any meaning. It continues to build, however, and by the final third, all the frills and flounces sing because there is a strong narrative melody.

There are lines here that cut through, not least that parents don't enter into any contracts with their kids. 'Our Fathers' explores the intra-generational triangulation of husband-wife, father-son, mother-son relations. It layers this with a inter-generational family history of father, grandfather and great-grandparents, including how their careers in western Scotland, not least around 1960s brutalist future-building through tower blocks obliterated their parents efforts, only to have a wrecking ball put through them by their grandson. So this layers kitchen sink drama with cultural history.

This was possibly going to be a 4/5 from me even when I'd put it down. However, it's staying-power stands out. I can't stop thinking about it and have a (very rare) wish to read this again. Re-reads only typically happen for me when a book is unmemorable enough that I unwittingly pick it up twice. In this case, it's the siren call of bittersweet beauty that is calling me back.

[Andy Devereux · Rating 2 out of 5]

Think I need to join a book club to understand what the fuck that was all about!

[Iain Snelling · Rating 2 out of 5]

Book club. Good themes, often very bleak, but seems to be trying to hard for effect, at the expanse of a readable narrative.

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

As someone who liked O'Hagan's more recent novels very much indeed, I was disappointed by this book. It had all the flaws of a first novel, I found, overwritten, self-conscious, striving for effect. I don't know how much the book draws, if at all, on the author's life, but it had the feel of being based on material that was still too close to be written about without a sort of sentiment that degraded the emotion the author surely wanted to convey (and if it's pure fiction, there is even less excuse). This is not to say that parts of it aren't very moving indeed, but they tend to be those in which observation rather than fine writing takes the upper hand - the two scenes in pubs stand out. The strengths in the book are those which are foregrounded in O'Hagan's later work, to its benefit. So, worth reading, but, in my view, flawed.

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrew Hagan is not a writer I am familiar with, so "Our Fathers" came as a welcome surprise. Overall I found it lyrical and moving, evocative and familiar. I found the family dynamics completely credible, and I was impressed by the powerful description of the protagonist's relationship with his father, and his surrogate, his grandfather, and indeed of his relationship with his mother and his grandmother. I would suspect that there are some personal autobiographical details from the author's own history woven into the text.

Finally as someone who spent a lot of his formative years in Scotland I found the descriptions of life in Scotland as drawn by the author convincing and familiar, in all their dreich wind-blown detail.

I think I will put Mr O'Hagan on my list of authors of whom I wish to read more.

[Emily Procter · Rating 3 out of 5]

men think they invented daddy issues

[Colin Davison · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hugh Bawn, visionary pioneer of tower blocks, built to replace slum tenements but too fast and too cheaply, is dying, unrepentant, clinging to his Scottish, socialist ferocity. But this man of sky-high ambition is now trapped on the 18th floor of one of his own creations, damp and with lifts that no longer work.
Not that such difficulties were likely to make such a man recant. ‘Our nature must change,’ had been his philosophy. ‘By climbing high, we escape our troubles.’
His work had been an inspiration to others, who in admiration called him Mr Housing. But grandson Jamie, who is responsible for knocking down the same now-substandard skyscrapers, regards him differently. ‘All his waking life he pretended not to hear other voices,’ he says. ‘He had no ear for differences, no time for the opposing view, valiant in his deafness to contradiction.’
So when Hugh asks him to visit after years’ absence, the latter intends to tell a few home truths, as he sees them, while expecting the old man really wants to be saved from ‘an agony of doubts.’
That confrontation is really all that happens in this ruminative and stylised book. It doesn’t feel like a novel, more like an extended piece of rather experimental writing such as O’Hagan might have encouraged as a contributing editor to Granta.
Phrases can be striking, the imagery bold and wildly original. Jamie describes his alcoholic father as ‘the kind that rages and mourns. He never meant well, and he never did well. A blind-drunk bat in love with the dark. .. He glutted on ruin.’
And even after he has torn down tower after tower, witnessing hopes abandoned, he sees beauty in them, ‘proud like a Soviet gymnast.’
Too often, however, the torn syntax and the free association makes a surface that is hard to penetrate. This on Hugh and his young radicals:
They raised the roof, his battalion of coughs.
But weren’t they trapped in their ways from the start?
A writing slate cracked from the beginning in a granite school ..
A young lassie drawn from her first things. Tutored in sorrow or the arts of support. Etc.
When the debris is cleared away, O’Hagan writes dramatically and vividly of small incidents, such as Jamie’s account of his father’s violence against his mother, in which a vase full of peacock feathers is smashed to the floor. Then he spoils it all with the mystifying: ‘It’s the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil.’
The best scenes are those where the action moves at a faster pace, leaving less time for foot-loose metaphor, such as one with young rascals collecting money on Hallowe’en, or in the bar with the clientele tucking into pub grub, including ‘a gammon steak that looked red and sore, like one of their faces, a half pineapple-ring set in the middle, a yellow-toothed grin. The plate was a mirror: the man was eating his own Scots face.’
I loved the nerve of that, while at the same time detecting a rather condescending attitude to the working and poorer classes that the Bawn dynasty profess to serve, the pensioners in the small hotels, keen for the cheap high tea. A mad sherry. ‘Nothing to stop you at your age. Drink it while you can.’
In a final chapter, somewhat dislocated from what has gone before, Jamie finds a reconciliation with his miraculously reformed father. It’s an uplifting end, but too insubstantial to resolve the major issue of the book’s narrative.
I found it difficult to make out its overall message, beyond something of a fatalistic view of history, progress and finding one’s own path in life. ‘We could only in time, make peace with the land,’ Jamie offers, although quite what that means remains unclear.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was Andrew O'Hagan's first novel and as such it was a successful beginning. I found it reminiscent of a memoir as it told the story of a son who returns home for the death of his grandfather and in doing so relates a tale of changes over time of both family and Glasgow.

Jamie recalls his torturous childhood and his enduring relationship with his mother Alice, who tortured her husband for years, while growing up under Robert Bawn, a nasty, raging alcoholic. Jamie eventually left home and lived in with his grandparents, Hugh and Margaret. Robert's father, Hugh, was a "visionary" urban planner who oversaw the development of public housing complexes in Glasgow in the 1970s, tall blocks of concrete and glass like those in the United States at the time. Hugh was an enthusiastic, ambitious father figure for young Jamie, and Margaret was a competent teacher.

Years later, when Jamie learns that Hugh is ailing, he rushes from England to help Margaret and Hugh. Robert has since vanished, but Jamie is happy to see Alice newly married and independent. Hugh's passing, however, is not without concern: a probe is looking into the elderly man's alleged misuse of funds while serving as "Mr. Housing," and his cherished buildings are being demolished to make room for the new. Which, Jamie discovers, includes glimpses of Scotland from Trainspotting, a dirty, historically rich, and obviously worn-out country. But Robert shows up at Hugh's funeral and then leaves right away. When Jamie catches up with him, he has calmed down and is now a contented, modest taxi driver. The story ends with a kind of reconciliation and cautious hope.

I enjoyed the novel and was moved tremendously by the emotional moments recounted as both memories of his early life and his experiences upon his return home for the final days of his beloved Grandfather. Most of all the author's gorgeous, almost poetic, prose engaged me in a way that few novels can. I would recommend this to all as I look forward to reading more from the pen of Andrew O'Hagan.

[The Armchair Nihilist · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Our Fathers” is a history of twentieth century Scotland told through the experiences of three generations of one family. Red Clydeside firebrand Hugh has dedicated his life to replacing old slums with modern tower blocks. Just a few decades later his anglified middle class grandson Jamie is demolishing them. In between them is Hugh’s son and Jamie’s father Robert, a belligerent, obnoxious alcoholic who personifies the worst of Scottish working class life.

These are just some of the messy contradictions of modern Scotland the book attempts to make sense of, but it becomes increasingly unwieldy and oppressive as it tries to cram in yet more: the rise and fall of the socialist labour movement, the post-war housing crisis, municipal corruption, dysfunctional families, bonehead sectarianism, chronic alcoholism, grinding poverty – the nation’s woes seem never ending.

By the closing chapters I was so exhausted by this relentless onslaught of government failure and human misery that I’d stopped caring and just wished it would all end. I also struggled with aspects of the writing style. Particularly the short, choppy sentences. One after the other. Like this. I eventually adjusted to the prose without ever becoming comfortable reading it.

The plot also takes a couple of unconvincing turns, particularly a partial reconciliation between Robert and Jamie towards the end. In my own experience such characters rarely develop in this way which brings me to what made this such a difficult and frustrating text both to read and review. As a native of Scotland I’m a bit too familiar with the people, places and events the book describes and this colours my impression of it in ways that make it hard to be objective and dispassionate.

O’Hagan has undertaken a difficult task trying to tell the history of modern Scotland in this way and it’s a shame the result was not more consistent and convincing. I wanted to like the book more but in the end it was all just a bit too close to home.

[Annette Morris · Rating 3 out of 5]

A beautifully written novel set in Scotland but the lyrical, poetic prose made it, at times, a little long winded, and sometimes it was easy to lose the thrust of what was actually going on, hence only 3 stars. Having said that, it's a sensitively written story about a grandfather on his deathbed with his grandson beside him. We get the backstories of both men and thus the story of four generations of fathers and sons who mostly hated one another. We also see the life of the dying man with the benefit of hindsight which allows his mistakes and misjudgements as well as his great lifetime achievements to be put into context which demonstrates how views can change completely over time and rewrite history.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moving story about Jamie, a son who returns from England to his home in Glasgow for the funeral of his grandfather, Jamie Bawn. The son is now in his early thirties. He recalls growing up with his father, Robert Bawn, a vicious, angry alcoholic. Alice, his mother, suffered her husband’s bad moods for years. Jamie, in his early teens, moves out and goes to live with his grandparents, Hugh and Margaret. Hugh, Robert’s father, was a visionary urban planner who guided the construction of public housing projects in 1970s Glasgow. The high concrete apartments went up quickly, providing affordable housing for many. Sadly cost cutting and speedy construction lead to deficiencies. The buildings had to be demolished 30 years later.

An interesting, well written novel exploring the losses, personal and historical, through the generations.

This book was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize.

[TIM HERRING · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first I thought I wasn't going to like this; another story with a young child and an uncaring alcoholic father but actually as it developed and crossed 3 generations it did get much better. Some of the sentences could get a bit too poetic for my taste. It deals with post was Glasgow, the housing crisis and how the slums were replaced by tower blocks which were seen as a great solution at the time but quickly became problems

[Margaret Mcdonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a story of striving for a better world against daunting odds of time, place and historic events , in a country whose past is still with it today. The prose is uplifting as lives of desolation are lived out. I’m glad I read it as it is about the life of an idealist who worked his whole life to achieve a better environment for the poor and forgotten. I hope there are many more people like Hugh.

[Hannah Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most piercing and remarkable books I have ever read. It shines with beauty. You could frame every sentence. Ayrshire rises out of the pages and Rabbie Burns sings. Jamie describes the body of his great-grandmother, lying down in her third trimester, like the peaks of Arran over the Firth of Clyde. Margaret's hibiscus, the softness of Scots dialect, the sticky-surfaced pubs and the tenements our grandfathers and their fathers were born in. I want to hold on to this forever.

[Gwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was not always an easy book to read, but that is part of its power. Sometimes I didn't want it to go on, and sometimes I didn't want it to end. The author did not take an easy path or settle for tidy endings. I have no idea if there are any biographical elements, but it reads almost like an unsparing memoir than a novel.

[Ward Hans vdB · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel covers a very interesting personal history of the post-war social housing program in Scotland, but in my opinion it's not allways brought in one coherent story. There are some very interesting literary elements present in the way the book is built up but in a certain way I feel it could have been done with lesser words and unnecesary content here and there.

[EFC Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written. Was captivated by the prose by the end but had to stick with it. Kind if nothing happens and yet so much happens. One of them strangest but most compelling novels I've ever read. I loved Mayflies so much, but this was great in a completely different way. And as a debut, it's really interesting.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this on the back of 'Mayflies' and 'The Illuminations'. Wasn't too sure about it when I started it but it got better and better and better. I read it in about 3 sessions (says a lot in itself) but I'm not sure how I'd've felt had I spent a long time with it. But I absolutely loved it. Astonishingly good.

[Stuart Crowther · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the topic of Fathers. The primary character was relatable. The neatly tieing up of the generations was satisfying.
A ‘3’ because of the writing style. I describe it as tight prose. Many sentences had to be considered and then paragraphs read and reread. A style of writing that I did not enjoy. Others would love it, just not me