Wow! eBook
The Gravy Star
Author(s): Hamish Macdonald (Author)
- Publisher: 11/9
- Publication Date: 14 May 2001
- Language: English
- Print length: 285 pages
- ISBN-10: 1903238269
- ISBN-13: 9781903238264
Book Description
When Farchar MacNab goes on a blinder of a drinking session at Hogmanay he stays away for three days. The temperature drops to minus 22, and he returns to his remote unheated cottage in the thaw to find that his partner and newborn baby have frozen to death. Fach retreats to Glasgow, where he tries to hide from the world by living in a derelict Victorian railway station below the Botanic Gardens in Glasgow’s West End – “a black airless hole with pigeons for neighbours and a park full of beauty on the roof of his world”. Scared of the light, Fach leaves his tunnel only at night for the safety of The Coffin – Glasgow’s first ‘death theme’ pub – and The Gravy Star, the cafe where people don’t stare too much. Slightly mad, he raves to himself, and tries to overcome his past. Obsessed with his Baden Powell-influenced upbringing at the hands of his Uncle Duncan, Fach dreams of leaving the tunnel for the Strath, place of his birth, in the Highlands. When he does, he strides out through post-industrial Glasgow, reflecting on his own family history, a hysterically funny trip to Berlin, and the toll Maggie Thatcher took on Scotland over 11 years. His return to his home village brings a dramatic reckoning. His return to the tunnel brings a positive turn-around that makes him approach the 21st century with new hope.
Editorial Reviews
Review
… The Gravy Star is presented with brio and earthy humour and tempered with some wonderfully lyrical passages. — Alan Taylor, The Sunday Herald, 10.06.01
The writing style … and the developing story are increasingly, quirkily attractive. not sentimentally idyllic. Its hopefulness is full of grit. —
Alan Riach, The Scotsman, 16.06.01[
The Gravy Star] is a powerfully evocative and compellingly constructed tale. — Thom Dibdin, The List 22.06.01About the Author
Hamish MacDonald was raised in Clydebank and lives in Inverness. He worked as an engineer before becoming a full-time writer. He wrote the international award winning four-part radio drama/documentary The Captain’s Collection for BBC Radio in 1999. He wrote The Strathspey King in August 2000. This is his first novel.
