A Green Tree in Gedde

Alan Sharp (1934 - 2013) is best remembered today as a screenwriter, the author of classic Hollywood movies such as Ulzana’s Raid (1972) and Night Moves (1975), as well as the 1995 film Rob Roy, starring Liam Neeson. But his writing career really began with the publication in 1965 of his award-winning – and taboo-breaking – novel A Green Tree in Gedde.

A Green Tree in Gedde is a multilayered, interlinked narrative of the developing lives of three young men and one young woman, all wrestling with the world and their places in it. The novel is a rebellion against the stifling orthodoxy of the so-called “swinging Sixties” as experienced in the west of Scotland, and originally gained notoriety for its frank depictions of sex and sexualities. More recently, critics have looked askance at its treatment of female and gay characters – and yet Sharp’s novel is complex, and there are subtleties here which deserve attention too. A Green Tree in Gedde is a lyrical work in praise of the centrality of the provincial, and the universality of the local. Although it remains controversial, it is nevertheless “a flagship of 1960s Scottish prose”.