Swing Hammer Swing!

by Jeff Torrington

A week in the life of Thomas Clay, a young husband and expectant father and aspiring novelist. Clay lives in a rundown section of Glasgow that is undergoing a typical 1960s-style "urban renewal," collecting welfare as he tries to complete--and start--his first novel. His wife is about to give birth and presses Clay to give up writing and find a steady job. Meanwhile, a strange man is going through Glasgow passing himself off as Clay and making ominous inquiries.

Available editions of Swing Hammer Swing!

	9780156001977, Paperback, Harcourt, 1995 $1.00 (Good) Other copies of 9780156001977

	9780151874279, Hardcover, Harcourt Childrens Books, 1994 $1.00 (Used, Good) Other copies of 9780151874279

Publisher Notes

Jeff Torrington's startlingly original first novel is set in Glasgow, Scotland, during a single-week in the late sixties. Christmas is approaching, and Thomas Clay is beset with mounting problems: his wife is in the maternity hospital prematurely; he's waiting for news of their transfer to "Legoland" high-rise housing - or for his tenement to be demolished beneath his very feet; he has no job, and his novel is, as yet, unpublished. Staggering from crisis to crisis, Thomas Clay is a man pursued - by petty gangsters, his Mafia-like in-laws, a doppelganger, and by time itself. He may imagine he has evaded the tyranny of clocks by escaping the nine-to-five, but no matter how fast he runs, the Grim Reaper seems cold on his heels.

Media Reviews

"Torrington's style is witty and sharp, allusive, wry, and appealing...with all of the mixture of strangeness, grandeur, and unpredictability that genius implies."

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