Lead Review (The Weekenders)
- Book: The Weekenders
- Location: North Carolina
- Author: Mary Kay Andrews
No.1 in the Raskine House Trilogy
A packed storyline with GLASGOW in the 1960s at its heart. It’s rough, it’s tough, a city where blood and gore add a visceral elemen. The storyline is heightened by banter and Glaswegian craic, which does add authenticity but can take quite some deciphering; so, as a reader, it’s important to keep focus and read in private if you are going to audibly enunciate some of the words to understand their meaning (gurning is standard when trying to decipher words and pronunciation in translated Icelandic fiction, best not to be done when others are around, and it’s pretty much the same in this instance )
1966: Stevie ‘Minto’ Malloy used to be a good footballer but is now a reporter, his interest piqued by the case of a dead student from Eastern Europe. Three years later Donald ‘Doodle’ Malpas is involved in the case of a dead teenager of Lithuanian heritage, but the story is not hitting the headlines.
Back to WW2 and its aftermath and Raskine House makes its appearance. Here two casualties of war acclimatise to their new surroundings, to wit the landscaped gardens and a house that has more or less withstood the vagaries of time. The long arm of the house will reverberate into the future….
This is a raw story told wtih gritty reality, tempered by dark humour. It is very much a vivid “snapshot of an era in turmoil”…..
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