Swing Hammer Swing! [Paperback]

Jeff Torrington (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 12, 1995

An "energetic, irreverent and very funny" (New York Times Book Review) first novel set in Glasgow during a single week in the late sixties. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, called it "a rich Scotch broth of language, steaming with metaphor...and pungent dialect." Winner of Britain's Whitbread Book of the Year Award.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This debut novel, set in late-1960s Scotland, depicts a week in the life of a writer faced with unending problems.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Whatever else it does, this 1992 Whitbread Award winner points up the disparity between what can make best sellers lists in the United Kingdom vs. the United States. Make no mistake--this is Literary Fiction (caps intended); the blurb-writers who compare Torrington to Joyce are entirely on the mark. Set in Glasgow in late 1969, the novel chronicles a week in the fateful life of soon-to-be father, would-be novelist, slum-dweller Tom Clay. The nearly 30 years of gestation that Torrington's book endured show through in the vivid characterizations of Glasgow and its denizens. What plot exists is subservient to vignette, but, in the tradition of Joyce, the language is rich and colorful. Not for the average U.S. fiction reader, especially with its heavy use of regionalisms, this work should still appeal to some with more eclectic tastes. Strongly recommended for fiction collections with enough funding to be venturesome.
- Robert E. Brown, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse, N.Y.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (May 12, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156001977
• ISBN-13: 978-0156001977
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,116,871 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An unexpected delight, December 30, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Swing Hammer Swing! (Paperback)

More than a year after receiving this book as a Christmas present from a sibling whose literary taste I was beginning to question, I at last opened it. Within minutes I regretted not having done so much sooner. This first novel is, in short, a magnificent work, a fact that hits you from the first page. It is said that the author spent 30 years writing Swing, Hammer, Swing. I believe this, as the facility with language, the ability to convey the tragic hilarity of life, the penetrating insights sandwiched between slapstick picaresque, all of these features, so evident in the novel, betoken an author of far more experience than one would expect from a first-time novelist. In fact the 30-year gestation of the novel goes a good way toward accounting for its apparent paradox -- the fact that it is marked by youthful exhuberence and playfulness, yet conveyed with all the indicia of a seasoned word-monger at the top of his game.

I was pleased to see reviews placing this work alongside Joyce's and Pynchon's, but I would put Torrington closer to Donleavy. The picaresque journie of Thomas Clay -- haunted throughout the week that we spend with him by omens of his mortality -- reminds me more of the misadventures of Sebastian Dangerfield (The Ginger Man), Cornelius Christian (Fairy Tale of New York), and Darcy Dancer (The Adventures of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman), than they do of the perambulations of Tyrone Slothrop (Gravity's Rainbow) or Leopold Bloom (Ulysses).

Although Torrington may well be the Scots' Donleavy, to push the comparison too far would deny the originality of the novel. And while I laughed out loud throughout, drawing concerned looks from fellow patrons of the cafe where I read most of the book, this is not just a funny novel. 'Memento mori' images pervade the novel -- notably and hilariously in the form of a certain outhouse specter (or is it a gumshoe, or bill collector?) With these images come an ominous sense that an era is passing, that what Tom Clay (and the reader sharing his experiences) knows and loves is on the brink of destruction. Nothing less than modernity's not-always-creative destruction is following us as we accompany Tom in his efforts to slow down this inexorable march, to hold onto a corner of the world that we find familiar and homely -- heimlich as Freud would have it -- while knowing that the hammer will soon shatter it. The week we spend with Tom Clay is the last one during which that architectural marvel and social microcosm known as the Gorbals existed, before being reduced to rubble in the name of humane 'slum clearance.' It is a heavy and poignant metaphor. What lies ahead we don't know. We know that it will be unheimlich. But, after we have survived this December week in the company of Tom Clay, we do know that the Solstice has passed, and therefore the darkness will lessen.

Concerned with mortality the novel is, but neither Tom Clay, nor Jeff Torrington, is consumed with morbidity. To the contrary, Tom is determined to wring as much joy in living as he can out of one week, and manages to do so in the unlikely setting of Glasgow in Winter. Torrington takes great pains to show us that this can be done

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Puns and poetry and philosophy, oh my!, December 5, 2003

By 

Mark Middlebrook (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Swing Hammer Swing! (Paperback)

This tuneful novel traces the adventures of Tom Clay through the waning days of The Gorbals, a slum in Glasgow that is yielding slowly to the wrecking ball of urban renewal. But the story is slight compared with the voice, which is by turns musical, poetic, punny, and amateur-philosophical. Torrington, like his protagonist, isn't afraid to careen between the high and the low, from Pascal's "Pong-sees" (as railway driver, Wee Tulley, calls them) to decrepit domino players ("those rowdy spot-mortems") drinking stout in equally decrepit pubs. Throughout the book, it was the working-class Glaswegian cadences, whether lilting or gutteral, that kept me charmed.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Swing" is the first book that I have read three times!, November 4, 1998

By 

Beau Timken ([e-mail]) (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Swing Hammer Swing! (Hardcover)

Jeff Torrington makes a grey Scottish day into a carnival of the absurd. He turns a week-in-the-life of one man into a pilgrimage of mediocrity, and a dance of celebration. I have never eaten a book up word for delicious word like this varitable feast. You don't know me and I certainly do not know you, but I guarantee that you will love this book.

Add it to your cart, and pay your electric bill in advance, because you will be up all night!!!!