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Swing Hammer Swing!
In Glasgow, Scotland, during the late 1960s, Thomas Clay faces several life crises--unemployment, the premature birth of his child, the prospect of homelessness, and a group of small-time gangsters at his heels
416 pages, Paperback
First published August 10, 1992
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751 people want to read
About the author
Jeff Torrington
7 books4 followersJeff Torrington was a novelist from Glasgow in Scotland.
His novels draw on the changing face of modern Scotland. Swing Hammer Swing (1992) was set during the demolition of the old Gorbals. It took 30 years to write. The Devil's Carousel (1998) drew on the decline of a fictionalised version of the Rootes/Chrysler car plant at Linwood. Torrington worked there for eight years before the plant's closure.
His novels draw on the changing face of modern Scotland. Swing Hammer Swing (1992) was set during the demolition of the old Gorbals. It took 30 years to write. The Devil's Carousel (1998) drew on the decline of a fictionalised version of the Rootes/Chrysler car plant at Linwood. Torrington worked there for eight years before the plant's closure.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
March 20, 2019
Oh the brogue! Now lads and lassies, I don’a mind a bit a brogue, but wha’s a bloke from the States supos’ ta mak’a dis?
“Maggie, god rest’re, never had tae hinge her back tae mend oor fire – bunker aye full tae the gunnels, so it was.” Or this: “Cauld enough tae make a polar bear greet; snaw never aff the grun.” Ok, so you have to work at it. It’s a bit of a chore because ALL the dialog is like that.
Sometimes, despite trying I still can’t get quite get it, like “The shop’s owner, a crabbit wee nyaff.” Or “Just two points short of a back’n front in wan of the good bits up by.” Sometimes a proper noun is used and you don’t know if it refers to a person, a town or a bar.
The novel is set in the late 1960’s in Gorbals, the worst slum in Glasgow. Urban renewal/slum clearance is going on (thus the title) and only a few buildings, mostly flats and bars, remain standing. The main character lives in one of these walk up flats on the list for demolition – cold water, coal stove, a communal toilet shared by 14 people. If you look at pictures at this web site, it’s hard to believe that people lived in these conditions in Europe at that time.
http://flashbak.com/powerful-photos-o...
All the action takes place in about a week while the main character’s wife is in the hospital awaiting a difficult delivery of their first child. The main character is a 20-ish man aspiring to be a writer, repeatedly sending out to publishers the same hard copy of his novel, coffee cup rings and all, because he has pawned his typewriter. He works part time as a projectionist in a decaying theater but mostly he’s on the dole; his wife begging him to get a real job now that the baby is due. On his daily visits to his wife in the hospital she nags him about -- let’s see, I’ve got that list here somewhere: hair (long, dirty), shoes (military boots, stink), clothes (military jacket), drinking (heavy), breath (smoke, booze), job (no real), money (?). Needless to say, her family hates him.
There really isn’t any plot to speak of. Mostly he wanders from bar to bar, smoking, drinking his pints, shooting the bull, putting money on the horses and dodging bill collectors. He takes advantage of his wife’s absence to get some action on the side.
Besides the brogue, the unusual, imaginative language is tremendous – a work of art. It’s filled with humor and irony. Some passages I liked:
“It was the kind of place you’d only visit if your plane crash-landed there.”
“The writings of a lunatic they looked like, bent and twisted words like an orchard through which a hurricane was racing, scattering the fruit of meaning.”
“…a beefy guy with a mane of white hair which was so intricately piled on his head that it seemed a stray thought might cause it to avalanche.”
“Too many books, too few answers.”
“My jawbones crackled lightly as the yawn tautened them.”
Imaginative to the point where it’s sometimes overdone, but you still have to admire it:
“…that magnificient blonde edifice on her head. It looked like the work of a topiarist though, doubtless, it’d been created by her own bare hands, a blowgun, a gallon of hair lacquer, a few hundred hairpins, clasps and side-combs. With its French-combed flying buttresses, curlicues, intricately-coiled donjons and barbicans, it, apart from being a hairstyle, might also qualify as a listed building.”
“About as comforting as would be the sight of a burning petrol station to a roadweary driver riding a tankful of echoes was the view ahead of me.”
The novel won the Whitbread Book of the Year in 1992. The author was a factory worker who published it as his first book at age 57, 30 years after he started it. I give it a 5 for imagination and 4 for story but I have to settle on a 3 for the difficulties with the language. Still highly recommended if you’re game.
Photos from the flashbak.com website
“Maggie, god rest’re, never had tae hinge her back tae mend oor fire – bunker aye full tae the gunnels, so it was.” Or this: “Cauld enough tae make a polar bear greet; snaw never aff the grun.” Ok, so you have to work at it. It’s a bit of a chore because ALL the dialog is like that.
Sometimes, despite trying I still can’t get quite get it, like “The shop’s owner, a crabbit wee nyaff.” Or “Just two points short of a back’n front in wan of the good bits up by.” Sometimes a proper noun is used and you don’t know if it refers to a person, a town or a bar.
The novel is set in the late 1960’s in Gorbals, the worst slum in Glasgow. Urban renewal/slum clearance is going on (thus the title) and only a few buildings, mostly flats and bars, remain standing. The main character lives in one of these walk up flats on the list for demolition – cold water, coal stove, a communal toilet shared by 14 people. If you look at pictures at this web site, it’s hard to believe that people lived in these conditions in Europe at that time.
http://flashbak.com/powerful-photos-o...
All the action takes place in about a week while the main character’s wife is in the hospital awaiting a difficult delivery of their first child. The main character is a 20-ish man aspiring to be a writer, repeatedly sending out to publishers the same hard copy of his novel, coffee cup rings and all, because he has pawned his typewriter. He works part time as a projectionist in a decaying theater but mostly he’s on the dole; his wife begging him to get a real job now that the baby is due. On his daily visits to his wife in the hospital she nags him about -- let’s see, I’ve got that list here somewhere: hair (long, dirty), shoes (military boots, stink), clothes (military jacket), drinking (heavy), breath (smoke, booze), job (no real), money (?). Needless to say, her family hates him.
There really isn’t any plot to speak of. Mostly he wanders from bar to bar, smoking, drinking his pints, shooting the bull, putting money on the horses and dodging bill collectors. He takes advantage of his wife’s absence to get some action on the side.
Besides the brogue, the unusual, imaginative language is tremendous – a work of art. It’s filled with humor and irony. Some passages I liked:
“It was the kind of place you’d only visit if your plane crash-landed there.”
“The writings of a lunatic they looked like, bent and twisted words like an orchard through which a hurricane was racing, scattering the fruit of meaning.”
“…a beefy guy with a mane of white hair which was so intricately piled on his head that it seemed a stray thought might cause it to avalanche.”
“Too many books, too few answers.”
“My jawbones crackled lightly as the yawn tautened them.”
Imaginative to the point where it’s sometimes overdone, but you still have to admire it:
“…that magnificient blonde edifice on her head. It looked like the work of a topiarist though, doubtless, it’d been created by her own bare hands, a blowgun, a gallon of hair lacquer, a few hundred hairpins, clasps and side-combs. With its French-combed flying buttresses, curlicues, intricately-coiled donjons and barbicans, it, apart from being a hairstyle, might also qualify as a listed building.”
“About as comforting as would be the sight of a burning petrol station to a roadweary driver riding a tankful of echoes was the view ahead of me.”
The novel won the Whitbread Book of the Year in 1992. The author was a factory worker who published it as his first book at age 57, 30 years after he started it. I give it a 5 for imagination and 4 for story but I have to settle on a 3 for the difficulties with the language. Still highly recommended if you’re game.
Photos from the flashbak.com website
September 22, 2020
Swing Hammer Swing! starts with a kick and goes with a swing…
While the slums are waiting for demolition, their piebald dwellers live adventurous and miserable lives no less exotic than those of Amazonia natives. Everything is complicated and interconnected: stories within stories…
Tales within tales… The narrator prefers to live dangerously… Misadventures within misadventures is his style of life…
But he has a clear purpose in life… And all these mishaps are just a fuel for his literary engine… And all these bizarre happenings are water to a reader’s mill.
Something really weird was happening in the Gorbals – from the battered hulk of the Planet Cinema in Scobie Street, a deepsea diver was emerging. He hesitated, bamboozled maybe by the shimmering fathoms of light, the towering rockfaces of the snowcoraled tenements. After a few moments the diver allowed the vestibule door to swing closed behind him then, taking small steps, he came out onto the pavement which in the area sheltered by the sagging canopy bore only a thin felting of snow.
While the slums are waiting for demolition, their piebald dwellers live adventurous and miserable lives no less exotic than those of Amazonia natives. Everything is complicated and interconnected: stories within stories…
When Nelly Kemp was a sprightly lass of no more than sixty years of age, she kept a caged parrot on the counter of her fag’n paper shop in Scobie Street. The parrot was called Jacob, a right vicious auld bugger with a beak on’m that could’ve snapped truck axles. Since such an opportunity never came his way he contented himself with snapping at the customers – in German, strangely enough, although to earn his corn he’d throw in the odd English phrase like: ‘No tick here, chum! … Hullo, Sailor … How’s your bum for spots? … Thanks for coming – come again! …’ What exactly Jacob was saying in German remains unknown but the Scabby legend has it that one day, Solly Singer – the last Jew in Scobie Street – on hearing the bird’s Teutonic prattling, clapped his hands to his ears and fled the shop never to be seen on the premises again.
Tales within tales… The narrator prefers to live dangerously… Misadventures within misadventures is his style of life…
He’d my number all right. There were hamsters that’d a better lifestyle than I had. I was a walking zero, a complete zilch with loser written all over me. It was criminal the energy I was willing to expend in order to avoid working for a living.
But he has a clear purpose in life… And all these mishaps are just a fuel for his literary engine… And all these bizarre happenings are water to a reader’s mill.
March 19, 2018
I saw this book when the Sunday Times did whole page on The Winner of the Whitbread Prize for first novel £32,000 hell of lot now but in 1992 for a older man in his 70s was blood wonder!
This very funny book even now after 25+ ys I can still remember bits of it including bit about a frying pan & a dead budgie.
This very funny book even now after 25+ ys I can still remember bits of it including bit about a frying pan & a dead budgie.
November 28, 2022
yeh great Scottish novel (30 years in the making) of one week in the life of a Glaswegian drunk who visits his pregnant wife in hospital between visits to pubs and to friends. Set in the 60s as the Gorbals are demolished it is funny and energetic and full of fantastic word play. A rich and absorbing read, heavy with Scottish dialect.
found some more notes in my 1995 notebook:
..a kind of Glaswegian Ulysses with Cyclops the cat, the 3 sirens coming out of flats, his wife like Molly confined to bed (although here a week, not a day, she's having a baby in hospital), fags and pubs and beer and darts. The Dab four. Talky Sloan the Marxist ranter, given short shrift here.
found some more notes in my 1995 notebook:
..a kind of Glaswegian Ulysses with Cyclops the cat, the 3 sirens coming out of flats, his wife like Molly confined to bed (although here a week, not a day, she's having a baby in hospital), fags and pubs and beer and darts. The Dab four. Talky Sloan the Marxist ranter, given short shrift here.
August 31, 2008
I must admit I hated this at first...it reminded me of James Joyce; a bit too witty and temperamental for my taste. However; like Joyce, the metaphors and little witty quips and smart-ass remarks along the way caught me up in the meatier parts of the writing. I honestly enjoy reading this novel and just wish that the author had more to offer after this publication. I really was astonished to discover that the author was actually middle-aged in the actual 1960s and not a 30 year old in the early 2000s. I really have a craving for this novel sometimes. It's like pancakes...that's the best way to describe it.
October 29, 2023
Thanks, Lee!
January 6, 2020
Torrington's tome reminded me of something right out of the Beat era. A Glaswegian from the Gorbals district is letting the end of the 60s pass him by as the neighborhood is slowly dying. Savoring his pubs, his friends at the local movie house, and despising his in-laws, and indifferent to his wife who is waiting for their child to be born at the local hospital the hero of the story is getting by one day at a time. This was finally the book that I was looking for, a look at the culture and lives of the people that call Glasgow home, and there were many examples of the city life that went away when the government moved the citizens out of this inner city neighborhood south of the River Clyde to outlying districts that our protagonist does not want to move. For anyone that likes reading the Beats, this should feel at home.
November 4, 2014
yesterday I scratched ma arse. Today I didnae.
Brilliant book!
Brilliant book!
April 1, 2021
Did not really enjoy reading this. Perhaps I missed what the Sixties in the Gorbals were like.
April 25, 2012
Set in 1960's Gorbals, this is a week in the life of Thomas Clay, who has taken a year's "sabbatical" with a "bad back", to write his first book.
The Gorbals is in transition, the slums in which Thomas lives are being demolished, and the high-rise flats are being bulit.
In the course of the week, Thomas gets drunk more than once, visits his pregnant wife in hospital, committs adultary, is harangued by his in-laws, stands up to a childhood bully, is almost killed by hard-line Protestants, witnesses a murder and much more.
This was Jeff Torrington's only novel and though set, by my calculation in 1968, Beatles Yellow Submarine, Apollo space program etc, it apparently took thirty years to write, and this occasionally shows in some of the dialogue which have I think later references. This small matter apart, I found this a thoroughly entertaining book, readers South of the border may struggle occaisionmally, but should go with the flow.
The Gorbals is in transition, the slums in which Thomas lives are being demolished, and the high-rise flats are being bulit.
In the course of the week, Thomas gets drunk more than once, visits his pregnant wife in hospital, committs adultary, is harangued by his in-laws, stands up to a childhood bully, is almost killed by hard-line Protestants, witnesses a murder and much more.
This was Jeff Torrington's only novel and though set, by my calculation in 1968, Beatles Yellow Submarine, Apollo space program etc, it apparently took thirty years to write, and this occasionally shows in some of the dialogue which have I think later references. This small matter apart, I found this a thoroughly entertaining book, readers South of the border may struggle occaisionmally, but should go with the flow.
May 16, 2023
For the genius use of language and inexhaustible supply of funny, memorable lines and observations (including some cracking Scots phrases - the Glasgow brogue / slang is fantastic and authentically, clearly, done), this is easily one of the most enjoyable novels I've ever read and deserving of a rare 5 stars from me.
I will certainly re-read it, and probably quite soon.
Immediately on finishing this, I ordered The Devil's Carousel.
Jeff Torrington obituary here, with some background to this novel, which he worked at for 30 years.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
I will certainly re-read it, and probably quite soon.
Immediately on finishing this, I ordered The Devil's Carousel.
Jeff Torrington obituary here, with some background to this novel, which he worked at for 30 years.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
May 20, 2013
An interesting novel told as the narrative of a young Glaswegian man in 1960's gorbals area of Glasgow as the hammer swings on the tenements. Whilst his wife is in hospital with complications in her pregnancy he spends a week going from one scrape to another, numerous drinks and an adulterous fling. It takes a bit to get used to the dialect , and the character is a contradiction intellectual who is drowning in his environment. It is funny and I think it would pay to read again. Overall I'd recommend if you enjoy a gritty read!
September 1, 2014
A great book and an arch example of what you can do through the power of creative writing classes whilst on the broo. Some of the scenes are hilarious Glasgow classics - like the night at the 'arty' in the Possil.
June 26, 2020
Bit of info on the author he was 57 when he won the whitbread book of the year in 1992. He was not in his seventies when he wrote it, as he died at the age of 72 in 2008. Also he was between 25-35yrs old in the sixties.
Read
July 17, 2021Written about the demolition of the Gorbals and relocation of residents to tower blocks, Swing Hammer Swing follows a week in the life of Tam Clay and the various characters he encounters. Tam’s wife, Rhona is in hospital waiting for the birth of their first child whilst Tam is meant to be finally getting a job as a banana packer and organising a move to Castlemilk. But Tam is a dreamer. A would be writer who conceives of everything in terms of a short story he could write, scribbling events into his notebook. In his journey he tells the tale of a cinema employee who wears costumes such as a fake deep sea divers outfit to advertise the films that are on show, or a how a coffin, destined for its burial has to be stood on it’s end in the high rise lift because the lift is too narrow to allow it to fit horizontally.
Torrington’s prose is quick fire, humorous and occasionally ribald. One paragraph in particular jumped out to me
‘Having so curiously dismantled the community’s heart, the sooty reciprocating engine, admittedly, an antique clapped-out affair, but one that had been capable of generating amazing funds of human warmth, they bundled it off into the asylum of history with all the furtive shame of a family of hypocrites dumping Granny in Crackpot Castle’
The tenements came down and in their place
‘The concreted concepts that’d been erected so far had the sort of penitentiary glaze to them , a visual smack of censure. What else were high flats but punishment blocks- vertical Barlinnies? Agreed, the amenities available to the new Gorbalsonians were far and away superior to the disgusting dearth of them in the demolished slums, but wasn’t having your own toilet and bath a price too high to pay for the privilege of living in a cemetery with traffic lights?’
Jeff Torrington apparently took thirty years to write this book. It certainly was worth a the time to delve into the weird world of Tam Clay.
Torrington’s prose is quick fire, humorous and occasionally ribald. One paragraph in particular jumped out to me
‘Having so curiously dismantled the community’s heart, the sooty reciprocating engine, admittedly, an antique clapped-out affair, but one that had been capable of generating amazing funds of human warmth, they bundled it off into the asylum of history with all the furtive shame of a family of hypocrites dumping Granny in Crackpot Castle’
The tenements came down and in their place
‘The concreted concepts that’d been erected so far had the sort of penitentiary glaze to them , a visual smack of censure. What else were high flats but punishment blocks- vertical Barlinnies? Agreed, the amenities available to the new Gorbalsonians were far and away superior to the disgusting dearth of them in the demolished slums, but wasn’t having your own toilet and bath a price too high to pay for the privilege of living in a cemetery with traffic lights?’
Jeff Torrington apparently took thirty years to write this book. It certainly was worth a the time to delve into the weird world of Tam Clay.
December 10, 2024
Brilliant writing.
“Eddie, bravely, and completely without an anaesthetic, studied his own reflection in the rear-view mirror.“
“Urquhart, whose napper’d suddenly erupted through a bountiful pelt of coppery hair (how bloody vain he’d been about those locks!) to leave’m nothing but a pair of rust sideboards and a perpetual ‘Why me?’ expression…”
“I sat close to the blaze and tried to convince my dead man’s bones that a thaw’d been declared to which they were invited.”
Tam Clay is living the last week in the life of the Gorbals tenements. Grim, dirty, violent, dishonest, but thriving with character, nothing and everything happens here.
Hard to read with very broad Glasgow dialect but completely original and funny.
“Eddie, bravely, and completely without an anaesthetic, studied his own reflection in the rear-view mirror.“
“Urquhart, whose napper’d suddenly erupted through a bountiful pelt of coppery hair (how bloody vain he’d been about those locks!) to leave’m nothing but a pair of rust sideboards and a perpetual ‘Why me?’ expression…”
“I sat close to the blaze and tried to convince my dead man’s bones that a thaw’d been declared to which they were invited.”
Tam Clay is living the last week in the life of the Gorbals tenements. Grim, dirty, violent, dishonest, but thriving with character, nothing and everything happens here.
Hard to read with very broad Glasgow dialect but completely original and funny.
January 26, 2019
A blurb on the back says this novel is "...somewhere in that hinterland where Damon Runyon meets James Joyce." I think I might throw in a little J.P. Donleavy as well. When I read a Glasgow author it always takes me a while to get into the rhythm and dialect, but I am always rewarded for sticking with it. There's plenty of humor and pathos as Tam stumbles through the week before Christmas just trying not to fall under the hammer like the rest of his Glasgow slum. You notice there's no plot? The author will address that issue in character during the story.
May 24, 2022
A three star review for a four star book - and that's my fault. Having started it a while ago and enjoying it immensely life took over and it's taken me way too long to finish it. For me it's never easy to put a meaty book down for a while and then pick up where I left off - once I lose that momentum my enjoyment wanes and that's such a shame. At another time it would have been four stars all the way.
April 16, 2025
This Scottish vernacular book is too funny, too clever, too densely packed with allusions, literary and cultural. That can be a problem at times. It's over-considered, and doesn't give you a moment to relax. He clearly spent way too much time making sure that each sentence was jam-packed. Nonetheless I enjoyed it a lot.
November 12, 2020
"What a city was Glasgow! It was really more into vaudeville than it was into violence, a fact seldom appreciated."
I've never read anything that comes remotely close to capturing the energy of Glasgow as this book - laughed out loud more times than I could count.
I've never read anything that comes remotely close to capturing the energy of Glasgow as this book - laughed out loud more times than I could count.
February 4, 2022
What's the difference between this book and Walt Disney?
The book has jokes but Walt disnae.
It also has an episodic journey at the heart of a slice of old Glasgow life complete with tragedy and comedy. Tremendous.
The book has jokes but Walt disnae.
It also has an episodic journey at the heart of a slice of old Glasgow life complete with tragedy and comedy. Tremendous.
May 13, 2025
I enjoyed that. Didn't know what to expect, which makes it all the better. Truly original, one of a kind. Almost a pointless meandering through a week in the life of. There will be deeper themes to be picked out which I'll have to think on. A keeper.
August 3, 2024
A long book in which very little (nothing?) happens. Quite fun, though.
November 1, 2024
Possibly the most boring book in the world. Why do some writers think that alcohol abuse is cute ?
June 5, 2025
Gritty novel written by a writer who worked in a scrap yard. Written over a period of many years. As far as I know author wrote one other book “The Devil’s Carousel”.
January 20, 2023
Everything Lanark wishes it was
August 29, 2016
Swing Hammer Swing! won the Whitbread Book of the Year. I like whitebread, but scientists with Twitter feeds say it’s no good for ducks or swans. The latter can’t moult and the young are unable to fly. This book does fly, but doesnae go very far. It’s the Gorbals, Scobie Street, when all the houses were falling down and the less-well healed populist sent on their way. The ne’-er-do-well narrator Tam Clay, 28, wordsmith and would-be-author is aware that Scabie Street has its faults, all of which he’s keen to document, and even the rats have tucked their tails in and, moved out, enmasse, but an invitation to visit the housing office in Castlemilk, or the option of the high-rise ‘Barlinnies in the sky’, doesn’t appeal. It’s a Friday to Friday stretch in the falling-down life of Tam Clay.
Plot is where you bury somebody so he would have the reader believe, but you can’t believe a word Tam Clay says. On the day of Talky Sloan’s funeral, for example, Matt Lucas pelted by snowballs, undisguised as bricks, and dressed in strips of sheet as The Mummy to advertise Planet Cinemas screening of a film of the same name, stumbled onto the road and is knocked down by a bubble car. But a lot has happened since the reader had come in on the opening paragraph a week and 406 pages prior to that, with Matt’s wife Rhona in the Maternity waiting to have their first child and his in-laws none too happy about Tam’s decision to devote himself to drink, and dereliction of duty and finding the right path not to work, so he can find time to work on his writing, isn’t as easy as it sounds. A problem many of us are familiar with.
‘Something really weird was happening in the Gorbals – from the battered hulk of the Planet Cinema in Scobie Street a deepsea diver was emerging. He hesitated, bamboozled, maybe by the shimmering fathoms of light, the towering rockfaces of the snow coraled tenements. After a few moments the diver allowed the vestibule door to swing closed behind him then, taking small steps, he came out onto the pavement which in the area sheltered by the sagging canopy bore only a thin felt of snow. Up the quiet little grave for privileged snowflakes desecrating feet had trudged a pathway which shone with a seal-like lustre.’
Characters like Tam’s bosom buddy, Paddy Cullen, who ‘would spend Eternity chasing a mobile pub barefooted across a jagged terrain of smashed whisky bottles’ leap from the page, but no very quickly, because they’re usually pissed. I think this is called, indirect free style. But like the Dab Four, the Beatles 1968 hit film, which come Judgement Day they hope can save Planet Cinema shutting once and for all, all you need is love. Jeff Torrington loves his city and loves his characters. He does not bring them to life and leave them stumbling around a cardboard Glasgow mumbling lines nobody want to listen to. Nor does he fall from character to caricature, which, admittedly is easily done, and as Torrington tended to do in his follow up novel (The Devil’s Carousel) and which really did not have a plot, or even a story worth listening to.
Swing Hammer Swing! really does sing. If you want to know what it was like in Glasgow, in the Gorbals for the ordinary man, or even the odd woman, like Becky that bit on the side whose man beats her, then read this. If you want to know how to mix four parts hypocrisy to three parts religion read this. It’s right up there as a Glasgow and international classic alongside that jewel in the crown, Ralph Glasser, Growing Up in the Gorbals.
Plot is where you bury somebody so he would have the reader believe, but you can’t believe a word Tam Clay says. On the day of Talky Sloan’s funeral, for example, Matt Lucas pelted by snowballs, undisguised as bricks, and dressed in strips of sheet as The Mummy to advertise Planet Cinemas screening of a film of the same name, stumbled onto the road and is knocked down by a bubble car. But a lot has happened since the reader had come in on the opening paragraph a week and 406 pages prior to that, with Matt’s wife Rhona in the Maternity waiting to have their first child and his in-laws none too happy about Tam’s decision to devote himself to drink, and dereliction of duty and finding the right path not to work, so he can find time to work on his writing, isn’t as easy as it sounds. A problem many of us are familiar with.
‘Something really weird was happening in the Gorbals – from the battered hulk of the Planet Cinema in Scobie Street a deepsea diver was emerging. He hesitated, bamboozled, maybe by the shimmering fathoms of light, the towering rockfaces of the snow coraled tenements. After a few moments the diver allowed the vestibule door to swing closed behind him then, taking small steps, he came out onto the pavement which in the area sheltered by the sagging canopy bore only a thin felt of snow. Up the quiet little grave for privileged snowflakes desecrating feet had trudged a pathway which shone with a seal-like lustre.’
Characters like Tam’s bosom buddy, Paddy Cullen, who ‘would spend Eternity chasing a mobile pub barefooted across a jagged terrain of smashed whisky bottles’ leap from the page, but no very quickly, because they’re usually pissed. I think this is called, indirect free style. But like the Dab Four, the Beatles 1968 hit film, which come Judgement Day they hope can save Planet Cinema shutting once and for all, all you need is love. Jeff Torrington loves his city and loves his characters. He does not bring them to life and leave them stumbling around a cardboard Glasgow mumbling lines nobody want to listen to. Nor does he fall from character to caricature, which, admittedly is easily done, and as Torrington tended to do in his follow up novel (The Devil’s Carousel) and which really did not have a plot, or even a story worth listening to.
Swing Hammer Swing! really does sing. If you want to know what it was like in Glasgow, in the Gorbals for the ordinary man, or even the odd woman, like Becky that bit on the side whose man beats her, then read this. If you want to know how to mix four parts hypocrisy to three parts religion read this. It’s right up there as a Glasgow and international classic alongside that jewel in the crown, Ralph Glasser, Growing Up in the Gorbals.
January 25, 2014
Like a number of other books set in my home city, this is essentially a tour of Glasgow in some ways - but this one is of the city working class in the 1960's, the bars they frequent and their love lives.
Thomas Clay is a failed novelist/artist/philosopher - but then everybody in Glasgow is a failed novelist/artist/philosopher - even the ones who are a success at something are usually tormented by the novel that got away!
Clay is being tracked by a sinister presence so he tries to stay one step ahead of whatever it is that's coming his way. His wife Rhona is pregnant, his bit on the side, Becky McQuade is a form of sex-on-tap and much of Glasgow is waiting on something better - it's just not sure what!
In some respects there isn't really a plot to Swing Hammer Swing - it's more a diatribe of every thing Thomas thinks, says, hears and does. It's shot through with Glasgow dialect - Christ knows how anybody from anywhere outside of the M8 motorway is able to read it.
At one part of the novel Thomas predicts that someday, bingo will be on offer in public libraries! I loved the idea then and still love it. I work in local government - if there's ever a brainstorming session about the future of our public libraries I won't be able to resist chucking this in!
I wrote about Swing Hammer Swing as one of Ten Books That Represent Scotland. If you are interested in reading about the others you can find them at http://theonlywayisreading.com/2013/1...
Thomas Clay is a failed novelist/artist/philosopher - but then everybody in Glasgow is a failed novelist/artist/philosopher - even the ones who are a success at something are usually tormented by the novel that got away!
Clay is being tracked by a sinister presence so he tries to stay one step ahead of whatever it is that's coming his way. His wife Rhona is pregnant, his bit on the side, Becky McQuade is a form of sex-on-tap and much of Glasgow is waiting on something better - it's just not sure what!
In some respects there isn't really a plot to Swing Hammer Swing - it's more a diatribe of every thing Thomas thinks, says, hears and does. It's shot through with Glasgow dialect - Christ knows how anybody from anywhere outside of the M8 motorway is able to read it.
At one part of the novel Thomas predicts that someday, bingo will be on offer in public libraries! I loved the idea then and still love it. I work in local government - if there's ever a brainstorming session about the future of our public libraries I won't be able to resist chucking this in!
I wrote about Swing Hammer Swing as one of Ten Books That Represent Scotland. If you are interested in reading about the others you can find them at http://theonlywayisreading.com/2013/1...
February 22, 2015
This reads a lot like the Scottish version of The Ginger Man, although it's much warmer and more likable, despite an early infidelity committed by the narrator. Probably funnier too. It's set in a run down section of Glasgow in the late 60s, and it's just a week in the life of an unemployed layabout whose wife is in the hospital, pregnant with their first child.
It's clearly written by a Scot, for his fellow Scots, and a lot of material eluded me simply because I couldn't tell what Torrington was talking about - I felt like a kid reading Shakespeare for the first time. The book seems like it could be altogether too miserable at first, but it settles into a groove midway through, and I was truly sad to reach the end.
It's clearly written by a Scot, for his fellow Scots, and a lot of material eluded me simply because I couldn't tell what Torrington was talking about - I felt like a kid reading Shakespeare for the first time. The book seems like it could be altogether too miserable at first, but it settles into a groove midway through, and I was truly sad to reach the end.
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