Alasdair Gray

1984

Book, 19.5 x 12.6 cm, 340 p., language : English, publisher : Canongate Books Ltd, Edinburgh (First published in 1984 by Jonathan Cape, London), ISBN : 978-1-84195-346-5.
Materials: Ink, paper

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. B 2027/36).

Literary synopsis

1982, Janine is about relationships between men and women, husbands and wives, bosses and employees, smaller countries and bigger countries. Jock McLeish, a failure in life, love and business is drunk and alone in a hotel in a town he can't remember the name of. He uses sexual fantasies as a means of displaying power and control over someone's life, anyone's, even if only in his mind, because he has lost control of his own. The fantasies, however, never reach climax because he always drifts away, involuntarily, into remembering some moment of his life that gives him pain or guilt or both. Deciding to end his life, he takes an overdose of pills and whisky, which leads to one of the most amazing displays of linking typographically form with content in any popular novel. Voices from his conscience, memory and imagination crowd around him from all angles on the page and in all types and size of font over 10 pages culminating in 5 blank pages when he passes out and revives in a state of blessed clarity. At this point we are only just over halfway through the novel.

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