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William McIlvanney

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Docherty (Canons) Kindle Edition

by William McIlvanney (Author), Hugh McIlvanney (Introduction) Format: Kindle Edition

4.5 532 ratings

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Whitbread Award Winner: A Scottish miner fights for a better life for his son in this “intense, witty and beautifully wrought novel” (Daily Telegraph).

At the dawn of the twentieth century, newborn Conn Docherty, raw as a fresh wound, lies between his parents in their tenement room, with no birthright but a life's labor in the pits of his small town on the coast of Scotland. But the world is changing, and, lying next to him, Conn's father, Tam, has decided that his son’s life will be different from his own…

Gritty, dark and tender, Docherty is a modern classic, “a serious, considered and achingly sympathetic engagement with the people whose only trace in historical record is birth and dead notices” (Scotsman).

“McIlvanney depicts the west of Scotland with a canny and ruthless insight.”—Scotsman

“As a stylist Mr. McIlvanney leaves most of the competition far behind.”—The New York Times Book Review

Editorial Reviews

Review

Here a human history is mined with humour and a clenching sense of its sombre inequities: man's squat but lengthening shadow in the sun (Guardian)

A serious, considered and achingly sympathetic engagement with the people whose only trace in historical record is birth and dead notices (Scotsman)

He has a hard muscular quality to his writing . . . His phrases hammer against you like a collier's pick (The Times)

Intense, witty and beautifully wrought (Telegraph)

William McIlvanney paints a world of harsh reality, but does so in language that is strangely beautiful and hauntingly poetic. His work defies pigeonholing in any genre: this is simply great writing from a master of his craft (CRAIG RUSSELL)

About the Author

William McIlvanney is known as "the father of Tartan Noir" and "Scotland's Albert Camus." His first novel, Remedy is None, won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and with Docherty he won the Whitbread Award for Fiction. Laidlaw and The Papers of Tony Veitch both gained Silver Daggers from the Crime Writers' Association. Strange Loyalties, the third in the Detective Laidlaw trilogy, won the Glasgow Herald's People's Prize.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00GLQ4BAW
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Canongate Canons (November 28, 2013)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 28, 2013
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2079 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 368 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #348,579 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #432 in Historical Scottish Fiction
- #1,545 in Family Life Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #2,630 in Contemporary Literary Fiction

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4.5 532 ratings

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4.5 out of 5

532 global ratings

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aficionado

Very moving

Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2023

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Wonderful examination of a hard working family. The raw simplicity of a man who must take whatever the world throws at him is both heartbreaking and deeply inspiring. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I believe you will also.

Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2023

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Wonderful novel of the lives of miners in Scotland during the early twentieth-century. William Mcllvanney did a great job in the dialogue. It was like a period Scottish play. The hard life was very well described.

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Beth Forsthoff

A Book You May Want to Resist Even Reading

Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2019

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Having read (and LOVED) other books by William McIlvanney and knowig full well what a marvelous writer he was, I tried to start this book. BUT ... I could not flex my taste enough to take on living on High Street in the tenements of Glasgow.
Because I seek out excellent literature in niche themes, I could not, in the end, avoid being led by this author (through the poetry of his prose) into the homes and lives of these poorest appearing coal miners; their families, marriages, religious positions, and ways of life from cradle to grave.
I came away with a treasure ... the confirmation that what matters at the final tally is not what you have; but what you are. This book (written in the vernacular and from the author's own personal history) is both challenging and satisfying. If you desire the best in fiction; you will be well rewarded in reading it!

16 people found this helpful

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ChaCha

Tam Doherty Forever

Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2021

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Who among us could comment on Wm Mcilvaney? Novels and tales and wee stories may we live within but never.

One person found this helpful

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Annie Buck

McIlvanneys best book!!

Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2013

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Wonderfully well written. Obviously using the home town in which he was raised...only slightly disguised, gives the settings, and characters a real ring of authenticity. The pride and dignity with which the characters , emotionally rise above their desperate circumstances, plus the closeness of their community thru joys, tragedies and the struggle of everyday life, must touch all but the coldest heart. A very thought provoking, wonderfully written work.

9 people found this helpful

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LAX

One Star

Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2014

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boring

One person found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2015

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Outstanding story.

4 people found this helpful

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Leila Smith

"An awesome wee man," Andra Crawford said.

Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2018

Who better to craft the saga of the Docherty mining family than the son of a miner?
No amount of praise by a reviewer could do this book justice. I read McIlvanney's book Laidlaw, published in 1977, a couple of years ago. It was wonderfully literate, unconventional and I loved it. Docherty, published in 1975, proved to be an even finer novel - a masterpiece. It is poetic, tough prose written by a man with a steely-eyed view of the true lot of the working class, a man inalterably opposed to Thatcherism and disappointed with Tony Blair; that view not tempered by any sort of false optimism.

Docherty begins in 1903 with the birth of a Docherty and ends after WWI with the death of a Docherty. Neither Time nor The War was kind to this family. As someone else has said, McIlvanney's characters have a "strong moral compass and a strong sense of social justice." And that's about all they had. Tam Docherty's father found solace in his rosary. Tam Docherty accepted his lot, not daring to aspire but rejecting the power of the Church, defying tradition and marrying a Protestant. His sons did not accept their lot, and looked for a more dramatic break with tradition: one going off to war as a soldier, upon his return reading voraciously about how others lived; one starting his own mining crew with a diminished sense of deference, even contempt, betraying his father's expectation, refusing to surrender to the mines; and one caught in between his brothers' aspirations. Tam's daughter, trapped by economic circumstance, followed her mother's example and accepted a life as desperately poor mother and wife. She never dared to dream. Jenny, Tam's wife, kept the dust away and quietly loved them all.

So, it is a novel about economic circumstance; about acceptance or rejection of one's expected place in the social order of early 20th Century Western Scotland; of fathers and sons and about making one's place in a family where a man only 5 feet 4 inches tall towers over his peers by dint of personality. It is about the Irish settlers and their sense of place in a neighboring country. It is about the passing of time when nearly every day is the same grinding poverty. Beyond the big themes, Docherty has detail rich and deep. There is Miss Gilfillan who lived life vicariously behind her lace curtains and always had her best tea service out, even if she had no food. Miss Gilfillan, who died in a "room cluttered with objects which would have brought a good return from the pawnshop just across the street," was their neighbor. There was "the Bringan" a bit of countryside in the grim city where "Trees were brooding presences, soughing incantations. Every bush hid an invisible force, frequently malevolent. Just to walk was to invade all sorts of jealously held terrain and you had to avoid taboos and observe placative rites." There were the young men continuously discussing The War and what they would do, where they might go, when they would sign up. "Somebody pointed out that Belgium was just a road into France. Another voice was sure that the French were allied in some way to the Russians." In the background, the grit and danger of the mines suffocated their lives like a black heavy shroud, briefly lifted for a fresh breath only by the wakes, the wedding, the rare ceilidh.
Each paragraph is dense, full of insights and the author's philosophical wisdom.. There are no throwaway words, no fillers.

Give yourself the gift of Docherty.

6 people found this helpful

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Brian Stephen

what Started Socialism

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 28, 2023

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Brilliant book with dialogue in the vernacular. It shows the worth of the working man. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists all.

utente amazon

Immenso.

Reviewed in Italy on August 30, 2023

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Immenso. L'ho comprato in seguito ad aver sentito dire a Irvine Welsh che è stato il libro che lo ha convinto a scrivere. Adesso scrivo anch'io e credo abbia influenzato e ispirato anche me:

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Sandy

Great story told in the vernacular

Reviewed in Australia on May 7, 2024

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By end of book I was thinking with a thick Scottish accent . Such a good story of that time.

Mys M

Rich Characters in a Scottish Mining Town

Reviewed in Canada on November 11, 2016

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Sadly, I had never heard of William McIlvanney until his death in December, 2015 when numerous bloggers I follow extolled his praises and mourned the loss to the literary world. Looking into this, I found McIlvanney was an award-winning Scottish author writing mostly about early 20th century Scottish culture in and around the Glasgow area and in a small town, Graithnock, which is based on his hometown of Kilmarnock, some 32 minutes southwest of Glasgow. Docherty (1975) is the third of eight novels he wrote, and several of the characters are revived in a later novel called The Kiln (1996). In addition to his eight novels, he also published a collection of short stories called Walking Wounded . His first book, Remedy is None , won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, Docherty won the Whitbread Novel Award, and The Kiln won the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award. The Big Man (1985) was made into a film starring Liam Neeson, and his short story Dreaming (from Walking Wounded , 1989) was filmed by BBC Scotland in 1990 and won a BAFTA.

From the cover: Tam Docherty was only five foot four --but wherever he stood he established a territory. The people who lived in High Street, Graithnock came there because of poverty, yet Tam moved as if he were there by choice. And his name was not a pleasant sound to more than one manager in the south-west of Scotland.

The story of the Docherty family of Graithnock begins with the birth of Tam's son — Conn Docherty. Born into a community divided between Catholic and Protestant, Conn, the youngest of four in a family that can scarce support one more mouth to feed, observes everything about everyone. He watches his mother, Jenny's, respect for Tam and Tam's appreciation of her. He sees his sister Kathleen trapped in an increasingly abusive marriage, his brother Mick go off to war and return disabled, his brother Angus stand up to his father and challenge the mining company management. He sees the respect the men down on the corner have for his father, too, and how his father seldom resorts to his fists but when he does, others quietly back off. When his grandmother dies, Conn sees how his aunt wants no responsibility for his grandfather but Jenny and Tam do what's right despite the added hardship. He learns to read and dream, but what can become of dreams on the poverty-stricken High Street.

Historically, it was the time of labour unions and the great war, of hard work and deprivation, of laughter and closeness, and even division within families. The chatter from the men on the corner, the singing from the pub, the desperation of wartime, the wild abandonment of youth, the love and decency of his parents, fairly leaps off the pages as Conn grows to manhood, absorbing it all and trying to find his own place in it all. The men are rough, the labour intense, and the times desperate. It could have been a mining town anywhere but it's Scotland and it's authentic. McIlvanney has been quoted as saying, he tried to 'give flesh to “the unfulfilled stature” of the dreams of his parents and the Kilmarnock community that he came from' (The Guardian, Dec. 5/2016) and he certainly achieved that. Written in a Scottish dialect, you pick of the rhythm and meaning of it quickly and it draws you into the richness of characters.

georgina thynne

Georgina Thynne

Reviewed in Spain on October 22, 2014

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McIlvanney describe la vida humana y unas duras situaciones con una profunda comprensión y una sorprendente prosa lírica y magnífica.

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