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    Dirt Road: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Dirt Road: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Dirt Road: A Novel
    Ebook443 pages7 hours

    Dirt Road: A Novel

    By James Kelman

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Booker Prize winner James Kelman's new novel, Dirt Road, tells the story of a teenage boy who travels with his father from Scotland to Alabama to visit with relatives after the death of his mother. In the American South, he becomes swept up into the world of zydeco and blues. "A powerful meditation on loss, life, death, and the bond between father and son. . . . Kelman has created a fully-realized, relatable voice that reveals a young man’s urgent need for connection in a time of grief." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

    After his mother’s recent death, sixteen-year-old Murdo and his father travel from their home in rural Scotland to Alabama to be with his émigré uncle and American aunt. Stopping at a small town on their way from the airport, Murdo happens upon a family playing zydeco music and joins them, leaving with a gift of two CDs of Southern American songs. On this first visit to the States, Murdo notices racial tension, religious fundamentalism, the threat of severe weather, guns, and aggressive behavior, all unfamiliar to him. Yet his connection to the place strengthens by way of its musical culture. Murdo may be young but he is already a musician.

    While at their relatives’ home, the grieving father and son experience kindness and kinship but share few words of comfort with each other, Murdo losing himself in music and his reticent and protective dad in books. The aunt, “the very very best,” Murdo calls her, provides whatever solace he receives, until his father comes around in a scene of great emotional release.

    As James Wood has written of this brilliant writer’s previous work in The New Yorker, “The pleasure, as always in Kelman, is being allowed to inhabit mental meandering and half-finished thoughts, digressions and wayward jokes, so that we are present” with his characters. Dirt Road is a powerful story about the strength of family ties, the consolation of music, and one unforgettable journey from darkness to light.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCatapult
    Release dateJul 1, 2017
    ISBN9781936787517
    Unavailable
    Dirt Road: A Novel
    Author

    James Kelman

    James Kelman was born in Glasgow, June 1946, and left school in 1961. He began work in the printing trade then moved around, working in various jobs in various places. He was living in England when he started writing: ramblings, musings, sundry phantasmagoria. He committed to it and kept at it. In 1969 he met and married Marie Connors from South Wales. They settled in Glasgow and still live in the dump, not far from their kids and grandkids. He still plugs away at the ramblings, musings, politicking and so on, supported by the same lady.

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    Reviews for Dirt Road

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Brilliant. James Kelman puts you right inside the head of a 16-year old boy as he comes to terms with the tragic loss of his sister and mother, resents the stifling protectiveness of his grieving father and begins to discover the world for himself.

      For me, it started quite slowly, but after a while I realised I couldn't put it down as the main characters revealed themselves. Murdo himself, Queen Monzee-ay, Tom, Aunt Maureen, Uncle John and others - they all came vividly to life in this skilfully written, moving story. Men aren't supposed to cry? I did!

      Thanks to Canongate. Never read any James Kelman before winning this book in a Goodreads Giveaway. I definitely have some catch-up reading to do.