George Friel’s book is a bittersweet novel set in Glasgow in the Forties and Fifties and plots the self-education of a young boy, David Heylyn, the youngest of three. With an irresponsible, Micawberish gambler as a father, the brothers run the house in their own way and David grows up with deep affection for one and blind hatred of the other.
The simplicity and freshness of the writing, the beautifully realised location and passage of time and the painful preoccupations of self-improvement, all make this an outstanding debut novel, and its appearance in the late 1950s launched Friel’s career as a writer.
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