His incisive criticism was intended to jolt readers, and his vision of the country’s literary and cultural past was in no way romantic, wistful or boastful. The novel moves elegantly across history, delving into the lives of two derelicts.Ĭarl also worked as a playwright, journalist, reviewer and editor. The documents feature not the philandering adventurer at large in Venice or in Europe’s capitals, but the elderly, pathetic figure in the castle in Dux, where he squabbled with the majordomo and composed his memoirs. The hero, an ex-political journalist, is left bereft on the death of his wife, and sets out on aimless travels in mainland Europe until he comes into possession of papers left by Giacomo Casanova. The Casanova Papers (1996) was perhaps Carl’s finest novel. His second novel, The Lights Below (1993), which won the Winifred Holtby award, features the travails of Andy Paterson, a self-loathing figure who has served time for a crime he did not commit and finds himself on his release lost in a Glasgow that has changed beyond his recognition. These included the survival of Scottish traditions, the complexities of the country’s language and the wider question of Scottish identity. The book introduced themes on which Carl would focus in all his work. The fiction created by the author and the equally unreliable life-story forged by the character develop side by side in an intriguingly structured, idiosyncratic novel. Illegitimate and adopted by a well-meaning but odd couple, Angus writes his autobiography within the novel, in some ways recreating his own being.
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