From Scenes Like These - by Gordon M Williams (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Shortlisted for the first ever Booker Prize

'A masterpiece' - Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain

'An extraordinary novel' - Michael Magee, author of Close to Home

'It deserves its modern classic status' - The Times

It's the west of Scotland in the 1950s. New houses are going up. Factories are opening.

But Dunky Logan, a 15-year-old brought up in a tenement flat in working-class Kilcaddie, is ditching school to be a labourer on a local farm. Dead set on becoming a hard case, he wants to work shoulder to shoulder with so-called real men.

Irish Catholic Mary O'Donnell arrives at the farmhouse as the new maid. She is pregnant - no boyfriend in sight. But she's smart, and she has a plan to get herself up in the world.

As Dunky is swallowed up by a vicious cycle of violence, betrayal, and booze, Mary becomes entangled in a savage family feud.

Now there's no going back, not for either of them.

With an introduction by James Robertson.

Review Quotes

"An elegy to ordinary lives. A forgotten classic entirely deserving of a place in the canon of great social realism novels of the twentieth century. A raw, unsparing tale of coming of age, of masculinity in crisis, of farm workers holding on as post-war Britain encroaches upon them . . . A masterpiece of time and place that looks you square in the eye and demands to be read" --Douglas Stuart, Booker Prize winning author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo

"From Scenes Like These is an extraordinary novel, full of rage and despair, but joy too, and moments of profound beauty" --Michael Magee, author of Close to Home

"A devastating study of 1950s Scottish adolescence by one of the most consummate stylists of the whole post-war era. From Scenes Like These is a genuine lost classic just waiting to be rediscovered by a new generation of readers" --DJ Taylor, author of Orwell: The New Life

"What impresses most is its harsh authenticity . . . Williams gets across the pains and perplexities of adolescent desire, guilt and aspiration convincingly and without literary frills" --New Statesman

"Raw and vigorous, harsh and authentic" --Sunday Times

"A remarkable talent" --Times Literary Supplement

"A rare, raw, meaty novel" --Sunday Telegraph

"A deep insight into the springs of violence" --The Guardian

"One of the finest British novels of its era. A landmark in postwar fiction. A brave and brilliant book " --Liam McIlvanney, author of The Quaker

"A coming-of-age novel that positively crackles with fury and frustration, From Scenes Like These deserves a place among the classics of twentieth century Scottish literature " --Malachy Tallack, author of That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz

"I loved it - it gets to the heart of questions around community, masculinity and opportunity in post-war rural Scotland. Reading the novel is to be reminded of how much has changed, and how little. " --Tom Newlands, author of Only Here, Only Now

"From Scenes Like These seems set to reclaim its rightful place in the Scottish literary canon. With themes of language, identity, class and, particularly, masculinity all tightly intertwined, it's as relevant today as it ever was" --Alistair Braidwood, SNACK

About the Author

Gordon M. Williams was born in Paisley in 1934. After he completed national service with the Royal Air Force in Germany, Willams began his career as a reporter for the Johnstone Advertiser, before moving to England and becoming an author in the mid-1960s. His novels include Walk Don't Walk, Big Morning Blues, The Camp, The Upper Pleasure Garden and From Scenes Like These, which was shortlisted for the inaugural Booker Prize in 1969. His novel The Siege of Trencher's Farm was adapted into the film Straw Dogs, directed by Sam Peckinpah.

Working at the arts magazine Scene, Williams shared an office with the playwright Tom Stoppard. With Terry Venables, he wrote the beloved football novel They Used to Play on Grass, and later, while working as a commercial manager for Chelsea FC, the Hazell detective series, which was adapted for television in 1978. He died in 2017.