A Disaffection

Last updated

A Disaffection
A Disaffection (Kelman novel).jpg
First edition
Author James Kelman
LanguageScots
Publisher Secker and Warburg
Publication date
1989
Publication placeScotland
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages337 pp

A Disaffection is a novel written by Scottish writer James Kelman, first published in 1989 by Secker and Warburg. Set in Glasgow, it is written in Scots using a stream-of-consciousness style, centring on a 29-year-old schoolteacher named Patrick Doyle. The novel won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1989, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2012, A Disaffection was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black. [1] [2]

Plot synopsis

The novel, written in a stream-of-consciousness style using the Glasgow dialect, concerns one week in the life of 29-year-old schoolteacher Patrick Doyle. Patrick is increasingly bitter about his entire life, despite feeling quite all right with the children he is coaching. He is in love with fellow schoolteacher Alison Houston, who is already married (without kids), and who rejects his advances. Midway in the novel, Patrick discovers he is to be transferred out of his present school which (his headmaster assures him) is the result of Patrick asking for a transfer, although Patrick has no recollection of such an act. The rest of the novel concerns Patrick's visit to his parents one weekend and, on a separate day, to his married elder brother Gavin's home.

Related Research Articles

In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irish prose fiction</span> Genre of Irish literature

The first Irish prose fiction, in the form of legendary stories, appeared in the Irish language as early as the seventh century, along with chronicles and lives of saints in Irish and Latin. Such fiction was an adaptation and elaboration of earlier oral material and was the work of a learned class who had acquired literacy with the coming of Latin Christianity. A number of these stories were still available in manuscripts of the late medieval period and even as late as the nineteenth century, though poetry was by that time the main literary vehicle of the Irish language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roddy Doyle</span> Irish author and screenwriter

Roddy Doyle is an Irish novelist, dramatist and screenwriter. He is the author of eleven novels for adults, eight books for children, seven plays and screenplays, and dozens of short stories. Several of his books have been made into films, beginning with The Commitments in 1991. Doyle's work is set primarily in Ireland, especially working-class Dublin, and is notable for its heavy use of dialogue written in slang and Irish English dialect. Doyle was awarded the Booker Prize in 1993 for his novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Boyd (writer)</span> Scottish novelist, short story writer, and screen writer (born 1952)

William Andrew Murray Boyd is a Scottish novelist, short story writer and screenwriter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sebastian Faulks</span> British novelist, journalist and broadcaster

Sebastian Charles Faulks is a British novelist, journalist and broadcaster. He is best known for his historical novels set in France – The Girl at the Lion d'Or, Birdsong and Charlotte Gray.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew Miller (novelist)</span> British novelist

Andrew Brooke Miller FRSL is an English novelist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Szirtes</span> British poet and translator (born 1948)

George Szirtes is a British poet and translator from the Hungarian language into English. Originally from Hungary, he has lived in the United Kingdom for most of his life after coming to the country as a refugee at the age of eight. Szirtes was a judge for the 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize.

The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are literary prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. They, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, United Kingdom, the prizes were founded in 1919 by Janet Coats Black in memory of her late husband, James Tait Black, a partner in the publishing house of A & C Black Ltd. Prizes are awarded in three categories: Fiction, Biography and Drama.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Kelman</span> Scottish writer (born 1946)

James Kelman is a Scottish novelist, short story writer, playwright and essayist. His fiction and short stories feature accounts of internal mental processes of usually, but not exclusively, working class narrators and their labyrinthine struggles with authority or social interactions, mostly set in his home city of Glasgow. Frequently employing stream of consciousness experimentation, Kelman's stories typically feature "an atmosphere of gnarling paranoia, imprisoned minimalism, the boredom of survival.".

Suhayl Saadi is a physician, author and dramatist based in Glasgow, Scotland. His varied literary output includes novels, short stories, anthologies of fiction, song lyrics, plays for stage and radio theatre, and wisdom pieces for The Dawn Patrol, the Sarah Kennedy show on BBC Radio 2. Saadi was born in Beverley to Pakistani parents in 1961.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caryl Phillips</span> Kittitian-British novelist (b. 1958)

Caryl Phillips is a Kittitian-British novelist, playwright and essayist. Best known for his novels, Phillips is often described as a Black Atlantic writer, since much of his fictional output is defined by its interest in, and searching exploration of, the experiences of peoples of the African diaspora in England, the Caribbean and the United States. As well as writing, Phillips has worked as an academic at numerous institutions including Amherst College, Barnard College, and Yale University, where he has held the position of Professor of English since 2005.

<i>The Road</i> 2006 novel by Cormac McCarthy

The Road is a 2006 post-apocalyptic novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. The book details the grueling journey of a father and his young son over a period of several months across a landscape blasted by an unspecified cataclysm that has destroyed industrial civilization and almost all life. The novel was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006. The book was adapted into a film of the same name in 2009, directed by John Hillcoat.

<i>The Mandelbaum Gate</i> 1965 novel by Muriel Spark

The Mandelbaum Gate is a novel written by Scottish author Muriel Spark published in 1965. The title refers to the Mandelbaum Gate in Jerusalem, around which the novel is set.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samantha Harvey (author)</span> English writer

Samantha Harvey is an English novelist. She is the author of several critically acclaimed novels and has been shortlisted for various literary prizes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patrick McGuinness</span> British academic, critic, novelist, and poet

Patrick McGuinness FRSL FLSW is a British academic, critic, novelist, and poet. He is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Oxford, where he is Fellow and Tutor at St Anne's College.

Evelyn Rose Strange "Evie" Wyld is an Anglo-Australian author. Her first novel, After the Fire, A Still Small Voice, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 2009, and her second novel, All the Birds, Singing, won the Encore Award in 2013 and the Miles Franklin Award in 2014. Her third novel, The Bass Rock, won the Stella Prize in 2021.

Events from the year 1989 in Scotland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patrick Flanery</span> American author and academic

Patrick Denman Flanery is an American author and academic. As of 2023 he is a chair of creative writing at the University of Adelaide in Adelaide, South Australia. He is known for his 2012 novel, Absolution.

Olivia Laing is a British writer, novelist and cultural critic. She is the author of four works of non-fiction, To the River, The Trip to Echo Spring,The Lonely City, and Everybody, as well as an essay collection, Funny Weather, and a novel, Crudo. In 2018, she was awarded the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for non-fiction and in 2019, the 100th James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Crudo. In 2019 she became an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

The Margaret Tait Award is a moving image prize for artists living and working in Scotland. It is named after the Orcadian filmmaker and writer Margaret Tait (1918–99). Recipients of the award have included Alberta Whittle, Charlotte Prodger, Rachel Maclean and Torsten Lauschmann.

References

  1. Russell Leadbetter (21 October 2012). "Book prize names six of the best in search for winner". Herald Scotland. Retrieved 21 October 2012.
  2. "Authors in running for 'best of best' James Tait Black award". BBC News. 21 October 2012. Retrieved 21 October 2012.