Synopsis
SHORTLISTED FOR THE FIRST EVER BOOKER PRIZE
'A MASTERPIECE. . . DEMANDS TO BE READ' - DOUGLAS STUART, AUTHOR OF SHUGGIE BAIN
It’s the west of Scotland in the 1950s. New houses are going up. Factories are opening.
But Dunky Logan, a 15-year-old brought up in a tenement flat in working-class Kilcaddie, is ditching school to be a labourer on a local farm. Dead set on becoming a hard case, he wants to work shoulder to shoulder with so-called real men.
Irish Catholic Mary O’Donnell arrives at the farmhouse as the new maid. She is pregnant - no boyfriend in sight. But she’s smart, and she has a plan to get herself up in the world.
As Dunky is swallowed up by a vicious cycle of violence, betrayal, and booze, Mary becomes entangled in a savage family feud.
Now there’s no going back, not for either of them.
'One of the finest British novels of its era. A landmark in postwar fiction. A brave and brilliant book' - Liam McIlvanney, author of The Quaker
'A devastating study of 1950s Scottish adolescence . . . a genuine lost classic just waiting to be rediscovered by a new generation of readers' - DJ Taylor, author of Orwell: The New Life
With an introduction by James Robertson
Details
29 May 2025
9781035073566Reviews
An elegy to ordinary lives. A forgotten classic entirely deserving of a place in the canon of great social realism novels of the twentieth century. A raw, unsparing tale of coming of age, of masculinity in crisis, of farm workers holding on as post-war Britain encroaches upon them . . . A masterpiece of time and place that looks you square in the eye and demands to be readDouglas Stuart, Booker Prize winning author of Shuggie Bain
A devastating study of 1950s Scottish adolescence by one of the most consummate stylists of the whole post-war era. From Scenes Like These is a genuine lost classic just waiting to be rediscovered by a new generation of readersDJ Taylor, author of Orwell: The New Life
'What impresses most is its harsh authenticity . . . Williams gets across the pains and perplexities of adolescent desire, guilt and aspiration convincingly and without literary frills'New Statesman
'Raw and vigorous, harsh and authentic'Sunday Times