ALISTAIR McNAUGHT
- THE TRAGICALL HISTORY OF CAMPBEL McCLUSKIE
Well that was a rare treat! I went out to a book launch at my old employers Blackwell's Book Shop in Oxford last night for the launching of a book by one of my dearest and oldest friends. Now Alistair won't mind my saying it has been a long time coming and I was privileged to be asked by him to store an archival copy of the first draft of this his first book. He worked alongside me at Blackwell's Art and Poster shop as my deputy and I well remember every tea break, every lunch break him huddled over his notebooks as he laboured away at his labyrinthine task in that unique and inimitable spidery hand his friends have come to love and, after many years practice, the actual ability to read.
Having read various sections and realising the complexity and sheer pleasure of the idea, I am overjoyed a publisher has edited and finally published his debut novel. 'The Tragicall History of Campbell McCluskie' is a magical knot of a book at once a unique kind of magic realism and contemporary gothic conundrum. I believed it worthy of publishing then as I do know so I am overjoyed to discover someone has had the wit and insight to take the bull by its horns and actually help edit and publish the damned thing!
A Scottish whodunit if you will with Gaelic murder mystery overtones awash with pathos and mystery. Replete with much humour and an unerring eye for the extraordinary in the detail, Alistair has written his masterpiece here. Don't let the idioms 'whodunnit' and 'murder mystery' put you off if that is not your genre of choice, this is a magical jewel of a book wrought with intricacy, smiles and at heart an awareness of the human condition and all of life's peculiar little twists and turns, I defy you you not to enjoy it with a wry smile and the compulsion to turn each page. I urge you to go out and buy it!
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| Alistair McNaught |
Alistair McNaught was born in Lennoxtown, Scotland and grew up in Bearsden, a burgh on the outskirts of Glasgow. After graduating in history and philosophy at Glasgow University, he moved to Oxford, where he worked as a bookseller for sixteen years, before becoming a sales representative for a London-based book distribution company. The Tragicall History of Campbell McCluskie is his first novel to be published. He now lives in Wantage with his wife, Sarah, their two daughters, Iona and Heather, and a melancholic white rescue cat named Alba.
The question that haunts Ian Alexander MacDuffy is why the playwright Campbell McCluskie was murdered at 10.30 p.m. on Wednesday 16 June 1954, for that was the very moment that Ian’s mother died giving birth to him.
The coincidence suggests that some universal meaning may lie behind that gratuitous and painful event. Ian tries to uncover every detail of Campbell’s short but colourful life: the guilt-ridden hypocrisy of his grandfather; his father’s success as a shoe manufacturer; his childhood in Clydebank; the death of his favourite aunt; his bewildering role in the D-Day landings; his post-war success as a playwright; his passionate and eventful love life; his ambiguous relations with the criminal underworld; his violent death – because as Campbell himself wrote, in his inimitable style, ‘It’s all down tae patterns and figures; if you can decipher them, then Auld Nickie-Ben’ll dance tae your tune.’
Cover art by Andy Kinnear
‘Alistair McNaught’s ingenious fictional biography brings to life not only slain playwright McCluskie but also the mid-twentieth-century Glasgow he inhabited. McCluskie’s literary career, social life and erotic escapades are vividly evoked against a backdrop of smoke-filled bars, sombre tenements, and back streets haunted by prostitutes and razor gangs.’
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