Er, der den derb-deftigen Genüssen des Lebens nie abweisend gegenüberstand, bricht plötzlich mit alten Gewohnheiten, besucht mit Eifer das lokale buddhistische Zentrum und nimmt an Meditationen teil, immer auf der Suche nach einem bedeutungsvolleren Leben. Nie hätte sich Jimmy ein einfacher Glasgower Handwerker träumen lassen, dass er einmal den Buddhismus für sich entdecken würde. Die Erleuchtung geht manchmal seltsame Wege. Witzig, liebenswert, kultverdächtig: Wie der Buddhismus nach Glasgow kam. "Ein bezaubernder Roman, in dem das Schicksal gewöhnlicher Menschen mit außerordentlichem Charme in warmes Licht getaucht wird." Daily Telegraph. (Apr.)įorecast: This may seem at first like a hard sell, but its very engaging characters and the universal nature of its family drama should please anyone in search of an absorbing and touching read.Illustrierte Klappenbroschur. American readers may be astonished to find how much, especially in terms of popular culture, they have in common with contemporary Glaswegians. Donovan's sense of the intimacies and pleasures of these small lives is acute her ear for their talk, alternately tough and tender, is sharp and she manages to make her little family at once likable and intensely vulnerable.
But he yearns for something beyond the quotidian and finds it in the local Buddhist center, where he is soon spending much too much of his time, in the view of his wife and daughter, learning to meditate and hanging out with the "lamas." Soon he is separated from his family, while Anne Marie becomes involved with a Pakistani school friend in an all-absorbing music contest, and Liz falls into a flirtation that leads to a family crisis.
Jimmy is a Glasgow house painter, a genial giant of a man who seems happy in his marriage to Liz and in his musical teenage daughter, Anne Marie. Donovan's delightful debut domestic comedy has the dialect all right (though it's very easy to follow after the first few pages) and a few darker undertones, but is essentially sunny and engaging. Novels from current Scottish authors are assumed not only to be full of the kind of dialect that on screen would require subtitles, but also fraught with edgy violence, rage and angst.
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