A Gift from Nessus

By William McIlvanney

1968

First Published

3.73

Average Rating

224

Number of Pages

6H48M

Audio Length

A dark, psychologically compelling story of grift, greed, and a salesman in trouble, from “the finest Scottish novelist of our time” (Telegraph).Winner of a Scottish Arts Council Book AwardEddie Cameron is a thirty-five-year-old salesman for Rocklight Ltd., an electrical equipment firm in Glasgow, who feels like he’s lived thirty-five years with little to show for a job as a salesman at Rocklight, Ltd., an electrical equipment firm in Glasgow; a mortgage; a un-paid-off car that sounds like it has the combustion engine’s equivalent of asthma. Who would miss him if he died, beyond his wife, his kids, and his mistress? Only his creditors, he suspects.But thanks to Eddie’s fiddling with the firm’s expenses, he may now lose the little that he thought he had. His life is in tatters. His wife hates him. And his violent temper has left his mistress teetering on the edge of sanity…From a winner of numerous awards for both literary and crime writing, this is a novel with a noir sensibility that explores the darkness we can bring down upon ourselves.“As a stylist Mr. McIlvanney leaves most of the competition far behind.”—The New York Times Book Review

Avg Rating

3.73

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

16%

4 STARS

55%

3 STARS

20%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

William McIlvanney

Author · 11 books

William McIlvanney was a Scottish writer of novels, short stories, and poetry. He was a champion of gritty yet poetic literature; his works Laidlaw, The Papers of Tony Veitch, and Walking Wounded are all known for their portrayal of Glasgow in the 1970s. He is regarded as "the father of 'Tartan Noir’" and has been described as "Scotland's Camus". His first book, Remedy is None, was published in 1966 and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1967. Docherty (1975), a moving portrait of a miner whose courage and endurance is tested during the depression, won the Whitbread Novel Award. Laidlaw (1977), The Papers of Tony Veitch (1983) and Strange Loyalties (1991) are crime novels featuring Inspector Jack Laidlaw. Laidlaw is considered to be the first book of Tartan Noir. William McIlvanney was also an acclaimed poet, the author of The Longships in Harbour: Poems (1970) and Surviving the Shipwreck (1991), which also contains pieces of journalism, including an essay about T. S. Eliot. McIlvanney wrote a screenplay based on his short story Dreaming (published in Walking Wounded in 1989) which was filmed by BBC Scotland in 1990 and won a BAFTA. Since April 2013, McIlvanney's own website has featured personal, reflective and topical writing, as well as examples of his journalism. Adapted from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William...