Blackden

Duncan McLean is an important Scottish writer who lives in Orkney, in the northeast end of Scotland where most of his fiction takes place. He is known in America for his novel Bunker Man. He is also the author of an intense book of short stories, Bucket of Tongues. Irvine Welsh spoke of McLean's early work: "It's very hard to think of a better short story writer in Britain today." Much of McLean's work is a perfect voice for what it's like to grow up in Scotland.Even though Blackden is actually Duncan McLean's first novel, it is only now being published in America. Blackden is the story of Patrick Hunter, an 18-year-old auctioneer's apprentice, and his life over a three-day lost weekend. He rides his bicycle around the village, he meets people, loses his bicycle, and his comic and dark experiences become the bulk of the book. Blackden is a somewhat bleak, but also a tender, gentle and realistic novel. Patrick reminds me of Stephen Dedalus at the end of Portrait of an Artist fleeing from Ireland so he could become a writer, instead of becoming a drunk like his father. Patrick sees people in his village leading lives that go nowhere, and at the end he sees an image of the wall of death. While Patrick Hunter may choose to leave Blackden someday, and ride away on a missing bike, Duncan McLean has definitely found his own voice as a writer. He seems fit to write and to work on a small island with waves washing over. Over the past few years he has created an impressive body of work.

From the author of the totally creepy Bunker Man comes another finely honed short novel set in the slightly askew world of northeast Scotland. The teenager on his own for the weekend has a fine tradition in modern fiction, and McLean adds to it with his tale of Patrick, an 18-year old in the tiny town of Blackden. Many familiar elements are present in his story: comic misadventure, unrequited admiration of an older woman, a somewhat manic personality, and alienation from his ostensible peers. He a hard worker and yet gentler and far more thoughtful than those around him. It's a truly affectionate portrait of a boy grappling with his place in the world. McLean's writing is both economical and evocative, as he vividly displays Patrick's life and surroundings.

Once acclimatized to the lovely, amusing and lyrical Scottish vernacular of the first few paragraphs (the vernacular becomes actually addictive) I couldn't stop reading this book, staying up till 3 A.M. or so each night and grabbing for it first thing on waking. As the book is written in 'real time' (over the span of a single weekend) it felt like I'd spent the weekend with the brilliant and sweet and lusty Paddy Hunter himself, in his home town (somewhere outside Aberdeen?) and left me wondering about his next day, Monday - then would he switch jobs? Would he recant his disaffected barbs or would he take pains to get on better with his friends? Will he go on to London or New York and once there, will he feel better or what will happen? I want to know where Paddy will end up, I want to hear what he thinks about; wherever he lands himself, will his disquiet abate itself? How will he deal with what he feels? When I was finished, I turned to page one and began again. The press reviews invoke Holden Caulfield, but I feel that is doing a disservice to McLean's originality and ingenuous, articulate, and chirpy wisdom. He's a guy who finds he is longing for a place to feel at home, or people to feel at home with, but never does the narrative sink to any annoying or whining admission of this; instead, it depicts the uninvited rumblings that disrupt the complacencies and denial that shield us all from the truth of what or where we find ourselves.