The Borough - Softcover

Cannon, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1852423838 ISBN 13: 9781852423834

Publisher: Serpent's Tail, 2000

Synopsis

Book by Cannon, Michael

About this title

About the Author

I was born in 1958, attended a Secondary School until the age of 17 and left without intentions of going on to further education. I became an apprentice engineer, but left after around a year. I then worked for the Inland Revenue but was pathetically bad as a Civil Servant. I stuck that out for about a year also and left to take up whatever desultory occupations I could to make ends meet: I worked as a labourer on a building site, a warehouseman, a general dogsbody in a factory manufacturing carpet sweepers. I painted lamp posts for a local authority. I took all the money I had out of the bank and went to America, to return less than two months later with no money and no prospects. I then worked in the Shetland Islands doing elementary logistics for a company which helped construct an oil terminal. These were just some of the jobs. There are more. I eventually decided to return to full time education. At the age of 23 I attended a College of Further Education to study for the exams to gain admittance to University. I read English and graduated four years later with an honours degree. I currently live near Glasgow with my wife and daughter. I work at Strathclyde University. Aside from The Borough and A Conspiracy of Hope, published by Serpents Tail, I've also had short stories published in several Scottish Anthologies. In August 2006 Lachlan's War was published by Viking Penguin.

From Kirkus Reviews

A pleasant, articulate debut in which Glaswegian Cannon records the day-to-day life in one of his city's deep-rooted working-class districts, doing so in the affectionate manner of one who knows the place and its people well. A handful of inner-city dwellers embody most of the passions and tragedy known to humankind. Simon, a reserved but eminently fair man, has the Borough's Post Office in his shop, which he runs with his domineering, close-minded, haughty wife Elsbeth, who has contempt for him and everyone else in the area. One of Simon's customers is pretty Irene, a young mother of two whom he's observed, with something more than compassion, suffering under the cruelty and indifference of her brutish husband McCullen. Sharply looking over them all is the nameless narrator, a newcomer to the Borough with desires of his own, namely for the middle daughter of a middle-class suburban family, a girl who has carried her interest in him far enough to move in with him while she does a resident's stint at the local hospital. Matters come to a head when Simon stops the hulking McCullen from beating his child in the street and receives a broken nose for the trouble. While Simon recuperates and his friends plot vengeance for the deed, McCullen rapes Irene, has his throat cut the same night, and Elsbeth turns away from her man to take the last steps on a course laid out long before--all of which leaves the Borough temporarily in shock. It's nothing a blowout of a New Year's party can't cure, however, and in the end all is as it's meant to be. A bit reductive in its neatness of plot, but, still, a tale told with vitality and feeling, heralding a significant new presence among Scottish novelists. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1852423838
• ISBN 13: 9781852423834
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192