1982 Janine [Hardcover]

Alasdair Gray (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 30, 1984

This already dated novel is set inside the head of an ageing, divorced, alcoholic, insomniac supervisor of security installations who is tippling in a Scottish hotel. Though full of depressing memories and propaganda for the Conservative Party, it is mainly a sado-masochistic fetishistic fantasy.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'1982, Janine has a verbal energy, an intensity of vision that has mostly been missing from the English novel since D. H. Lawrence.' New York Times --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Alasdair Gray is the author of The Book of Prefaces, the dystopian classic Lanark, Old Men in Love, and Poor Things, for which he won the Whitbread Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 345 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (October 30, 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670513873
• ISBN-13: 978-0670513871
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,637,044 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonders and terrors, December 8, 1999

By 

"lexo-2" - See all my reviews

This review is from: 1982 Janine (King Penguin) (Paperback)

1982 Janine is set in the consciousness of a middle-aged inspector of security systems, holed up in a small Scottish hotel with a bottle of whisky, trying to have sexual fantasies. So far, so unpromising. The trouble is, his memories of his (far from satisfying) life keep getting in the way. And so the book continues, with Jock's baroque and teeth-gratingly embarrassing fantasies (big-breasted women in leather skirts, behaving badly) displaced more and more frequently by the shabby and unflattering truth - Jock is aware that he is a small, not very brave man who has spent his life making bad decision after bad decision. Eventually he swallows a bottle of sleeping pills. And that's not even the third last chapter, so I'm not spoiling anything for you. This is a brilliant novel - Gray's style is (as ever) classical, measured and almost pedantically correct, but it fits Jock as well as the three-piece suits he's worn since his college days. There are some barkingly insane typographical maneuvres in the wake of the pill-swallowing episode, but that's all just to set up what comes next. The comedy is grim and the sadness is awful, but there's real catharsis there for those who can appreciate it. My favourite of Gray's novels - leaner and tougher (if not as wild and ambitious) than Lanark, and less whimsical than much of his later work. The paperback edition is completed with his now-characteristic inclusion of snippets from the book's worst reviews.

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow., March 21, 2007

By 

Lynn A. Weber "lwjk" (Columbia, MD) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 1982, Janine (Canongate Classics) (Paperback)

This is a powerful and unusual novel. I'm surprised that Gray isn't more widely known. His writing is challenging but rewarding.

4 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Demonstrably Demented, December 17, 2003

By 

D. Mikels "It's always Happy Hour here" (Skunk Holler) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 1982 Janine (Hardcover)

I have a headache. This book was one of the most bittersweet reads I can remember: a page where I'm engrossed, followed by a page where I'm grossed out (by the author's style, not the content). I'm open to all sorts of subtle and not-so-subtle literary devices, and Alasdair Gray's 1982 JANINE embarks on a journey of writing creativity with all the tenderness of a sledgehammer.

The premise of Gray's story is interesting: a burned-out, middle-aged businessman drowning his sorrows in a shabby motel room while concocting a series of farfetched sexual fantasies--all in an effort to smother the overwhelming dreariness of his actual life. A plot dripping with existentialism, to be sure, and Gray's furious (often unreadable) style creates a mood of despair and frustration that conjures up enough alcohol-induced pink elephants to fill the San Diego Zoo. Yet the style also works against the story, as it becomes redundant to the point where its impact is lost. And as an aside, Gray's (through his protagonist) preoccupation with white silk blouses and button-down denim skirts became downright annoying. I would have preferred to have seen a little spandex, myself.

This is no "light" read; the author's style requires the reader to pay close attention. Yet there is a literally unreadable chapter--when Jock, our protagonist, takes a bottle of sleeping pills on top of his fifth of whiskey--where my heart went out to the copy editor who had to tackle all the nonsensical and upside down prose. The author waits until the end of his story to tell us the intimate details of Jock's trials and tribulations, then gives us an anticlimactic ending in the form of a very weak epiphany that doesn't measure up to all of the madness running rampant through the preceding pages. So as I reach for the aspirin, I would like to believe that 1982 JANINE is a metaphorical Mae West: when it's good, it's very, very good--when it's bad, it's blathering nonsense.

--D. Mikels