Electric Brae

Damn.. got to this thread kind of late. Echo much of what's already been said. I was after some of Greig's poetry- www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0950241016/qid=1082454597/sr=1-39/ref=... Buggar. His other novels look good tho. [%sig%]

Gave up on this book in the end. I wanted to approve but the stilted nature of the writing got the better of my interest. I picture the writer as a nice middle-class boy. He felt very much on the outside of the ordinary people in the novel. Many of the characters spoke and reacted like stereotypes. There seemed to be some embarrassment about sex. I also disliked the prose, which tried too hard to be poetical in that annoyingly elliptical way some writers think of as arty and significant. [%sig%]

Shhh. It better be good, I've just ordered it from Amazon. Curses...

well, I took it on holiday but didn't touch it, finished two others instead....it's become like homework now...I agree with fash and chaps (hurray it's not just me:-), it's just not gripping me at all, I am past page 40 though...plodding on

I've just started reading this and am finding it's really getting on my wick. (a small town in the north of Scotland). We don't speak like that, on and off choochter. Not even choochters speak like that. So annoying...and his racism against Glaswegians is just one cliche too far. It's a cheap shot and lazy writing. I'm a bit fed up of this image of West coasters being perpetuated and then thought of as insightful fiction - as if everyone from Glasgow is agressive, poorly educated and sleeping with a red flag under one pillow and a socialist worker under the other (that's a magazine, not a yummy bloke)... "Once you get past the icey surface of your avereage (east coaster) you are faced with the granite beneath" - true true... I'll persevere as I'm only a short way into it...I don't think it's so well written, though I like the idea of the things on the memory tray. Maybe I'll steal that idea for my revenge novel on the sheep shagging, skirlie eating granite people from the North East. It's called 'Wear a kilt so yer trooser zips dinna scare the sheep' Baaah humbug

Forget about whether it is accurate about Scottish people from a certain part of the country and how they speak - it is about people. The narrator has got a whole bunch of chips on his shoulders and being Scottish is one of them, but he does get bloody interesting as a character, and it is the whole story about love (which can be a very different beast to a love story) that is interesting. Personally, I loathe accents and regional dialogue in fiction - I think it is much better to adopt the Sean Connery approach and just do the same voice for everyone, rather than try to get an accent right and get it wrong. (Having said that, though I'm not from Scotland, I rather suspect that Grieg is, and that it is accurate for at least some Scottish people - but the whole nationalism thing causes problems doesn't it? You wouldn't dream of complaining that you know some rock-climbers and they are not exactly like this climber in the book, so the writer knows nothing about rock climbers, but being from a place represented in fiction and not having it spot on grates more than anything)

Fit like...(transl: hello) I do know rock climbers, come with the territory up here, and they are like him...:-) I also work in the oil industry...and most of the roughnecks are from Yorkshire Anyway, having read what you say though I agree that the real problem is that I too hate the regional text thing. It just grates all the more that he's punctuating Doric with old Scots and he lives in Stirling...it breaks the story for me, so it's annoying. Like a bad accent in a movie breaks your suspension of disbelief. I'll plod on with it and hopefully I'll be able to skim the Doric...

I've just bought this book myself now, so maybe Greig should be sending Fish some royalties. I read the first rock-climbing chapter and loved it. Particularly: "Like this?" "Na. This way." I felt a hand quite gently swivel my foot round. "Now do the same wi the other. Now stand right up on it when you stretch, that'll gie you the extra reach." It did. This time when I reached the nobble I was still in balance. Got the left boot on a small wrinkle and swung round the corner no bother. That's is one of the most difficult things in writing, I think, to describe precise physical action. Greig really made me visualise everything in this chapter, despite the specialism of what was going on. * As far as accents go, I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE accents in writing. Accuracy isn't the main thing, for me, but the music. I mean, did anyone really ever speak like the people in "The Crucible"? I love to hear them kicking off with their "pointy reckonings" and their "poppets" and so on. Another thing is that people's accents are often mixed, in these days of mobility. Take Mike Skinner of "The Streets", for example, with his mix of London and Brummy. Round here in Cornwall there are all sorts of mixes, in people who moved here half way through their childhood. I know several Americano-Cornish, Brummy-Cornish, and Scouser-Cornish,; I love the way they speak. I found "Trainspotting" too dense for me, though; but I love William Barnes.

I've never read any Scottish fiction before. Mcshock Mchorror

I really can't comment on the regional writing thing. I didn't find it obtrusive at all - it was clearly comprehenisible to a sassenach like me - it was just Scottish! I also didn't get the Glasgow thing as an insult. Everyone from somewhere close to somewhere else has misconceptions about the others - you ought to hear what people from Nottingham say about people from Derby and they're only 20 miles apart. It's just part of tribalism - a trait we probably all suffer from to a greater or lesser extent. What I loved about this book was the development of the main character. He unfolds gradually and beautifully in all his flawed magnificence throughout the book. Greig gives him more depth than almost any other character I can think of in fiction - and that is a real achievement.

What I liked was that you felt that the main character was a friend, by which I mean not only did you like him, but you also wanted to grab hold of him sometimes and say 'listen mate, your girlfriend is a right mare, bin her off' and other times 'are you going to stop moping and get back to living' and 'don't bloody wreck what you've got because you're still hooked on someone destructive' And best of all, every time you felt like that, he reached the same conclusions about twenty pages later, so you never got too frustrated with him; he got some sense as he went on. Although in general, I'm with Charlie Kaufman "I'd like to write a screenplay where there's no conflict, where people don't learn lessons and grow as a person..." - I did like this aspect of the book. Exactly like having a mate who makes a mess of his life, but also pulls himself together in stages and gets to be a better version of his earlier self.

I confess I'm only at page 40 - I'll finish it first, if I can think to pick it up again...

i am very glad to hear such mainly positive comments about this book ... sorry its getting on your wick purp ... the most tremendous thing about it for me was the atmosphere it created ... i dont think i have often felt so intensely bound in the emotional landscape of a person as i was with this main character ... whilst now i dont retain the detail of the book the FEELING of it and of him has stayed with me completely ...like a love affair ... the book made me ACHE ... as utterly as if i had gone through those relationships myself and for my money that is a bloody powerful read ...