Lanark
Lanark was the second best book I’ve ever read. Worth reading for 2 weeks, ruining the reading schedule.
Lanark is an unusual book, employing techniques seldom used by other authors, although parallels have been drawn with literary greats such as Dante and Blake. There are four books in this volume which are sequenced book three, one, two and four, and they must be read in this order. The volume contains two interwoven narratives with books one and four dealing with the life of Lanark and his time in Unthank and Provan. These books are written in a fantastical manner in a Kafkaesque style, introducing nightmarish notions such as characters growing mouths on their bodies and a disease called “dragonhide”.
In contrast to this, books two and four are written in a much more realistic and down to earth style. These two books follow the life and troubles of Duncan Thaw, who lives in Glasgow. This section of Lanark is very much autobiographical, mirroring numerous events in Gray’s life such as his evacuation during the war to Perthshire, the occasion of a dance at the Glasgow School of Art, and Gray’s continuing health problems with asthma and eczema.
In book three, Lanark cannot remember his past, and so in the prologue (at the end of book three) Lanark asks an oracle to tell him who he is, with the oracle stating he will tell him about Duncan Thaw. This ends book one and takes the reader to Thaw’s story, thereby suggesting that Thaw and Lanark are perhaps the same person. There are also marked similarities between Unthank and Glasgow, again suggesting that both places are the same. Both localities are dystopian and both are ultimately apocalyptic for the characters - ending in destruction and death. However, numerous interpretations of this book and its characters have been suggested.
