More about this book/
check for other copies

A Review by Gerry Donaghy

I first read Alasdair Gray nearly a decade ago for the only reason a guy will do most things he wouldn't otherwise do: to impress a girl. I had never heard of Gray, but this coed gushed over him. Starting with his short story collection Unlikely Stories, Mostly, I began to marvel at this writer who spoke of the existential ennui that permeated everyday life, but refused to wallow in it. At the end of the day, Gray's protagonists were capable of achieving the small victories that nourish the soul. Unlike Sartre or Camus, who liked to bring the curtain down with a thud, Gray held out a for sliver of hope, a ray of light that is literally the salvation of the eponymous hero of his debut novel Lanark: A Life in Four Books. Furthermore, Gray is a literary jester, one with a keen wit that allows him to play games with his texts and let the reader in on whatever joke is happening in his labyrinthine imagination. I haven't spoken to the coed in question in quite a few years, but my affinity for Gray has never wavered.

The Ends of Our Tethers finds Gray distilling the elements that are his stock-in-trade into a tidy 176 pages: the quirky, sometimes irritating, but always humane characters; the subversive cheekiness; his unapologetic socialist beliefs and distrust of all bureaucracies. The characters that populate Gray's fiction are usually working-class people trying to achieve the modest goals they've set for themselves in an indifferent, often hostile, world. Whether he's writing about a man trying to find love in the face of three ruinous marriages, the father who lost his sons in the Twin Towers and finds solace in cataloging his chronic skin ailments, or the university writing instructor coming to terms with a far more talented student, Gray assembles a wide variety of characters to pity, understand, and eventually embrace. In fact, if Gray is going to have a laugh at somebody's expense, it's usually at the reader's, as he deftly demonstrates in "Moral Philosophy Exam" and "End Notes and Critical Fuel."

The proceedings threaten to become derailed with the inclusion of the piece "15 February 2003," which is an essay describing the global anti-Iraq war protest which the author participated in last year. In a collection of stories that gently tell their tales, the outright anger of this essay is much more suitable for a political pamphlet. Perhaps Gray included this as a reminder to smug readers that misfortune can happen to them at any moment; that maybe some of us are closer to the end of our tethers than we would like to admit. While it seems out of place, "15 February 2003" still made for potent reading, and debating its value alongside the other stories is mere quibbling. By the time the final story is told, the estrangement of including a piece of nonfiction in a short story collection has evaporated.

Ultimately, The Ends of Our Tethers makes a welcome addition to Gray's canon. While Gray's longtime readers may find themselves wishing for something more substantive, they will be hard-pressed to find many flaws in this subtle and pleasing collection. Readers wanting to test the waters of this unique and important writer will find this book a delightful point of departure.