
a book
Swing Hammer Swing!
Jeff Torrington · 2016 · 422 pages
Jeff Torrington's startlingly original first novel is set in Glasgow, Scotland, during a single-week in the late sixties. Christmas is approaching, and Thomas Clay is beset with mounting problems: his wife is in the maternity hospital prematurely; he's waiting for news of their transfer to "Legoland" high-rise housing - or for his tenement to be demolished beneath his very feet; he has no job, and his novel is, as yet, unpublished. Staggering from crisis to crisis, Thomas Clay is a man pursued - by petty gangsters, his Mafia-like in-laws, a doppelganger, and by time itself. He may imagine he has evaded the tyranny of clocks by escaping the nine-to-five, but no matter how fast he runs, the Grim Reaper seems cold on his heels.
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Bob Odenkirk
“After reading an energetic, positive review buried deep within The New York Times one day, I bought this Glasgow-set first novel and was thrilled by the writing: Swing Hammer Swing! is funny, clever, and bleak as hell. I wrote Torrington a fan letter, the only one I’ve ever written. Never received a reply. No hard feelings.”↗