''Poor Things'' is a
novel by Scottish writer
Alasdair Gray
Alasdair James Gray (28 December 1934 – 29 December 2019) was a Scottish writer and artist. His first novel, ''Lanark: A Life in Four Books, Lanark'' (1981), is seen as a landmark of Scottish fiction. He published novels, short stories, plays ...
, published in 1992. It won the
Whitbread Award
The Costa Book Awards were a set of annual literary awards recognising English-language books by writers based in UK and Ireland. Originally named the Whitbread Book Awards from 1971 to 2005 after its first sponsor, the Whitbread company, then ...
and the
Guardian Fiction Prize
The Guardian Fiction Prize was a literary award sponsored by ''The Guardian'' newspaper. Founded in 1965, it recognized one fiction book per year written by a British or Commonwealth writer and published in the United Kingdom. The award ran for 33 ...
the same year.
The novel was called "a magnificently brisk, funny, dirty, brainy book" by the ''
London Review of Books'' and is a departure from Gray's usual subject-matter of Glasgow realism and fantasy. However, its Victorian narrative takes in Gray's previous concerns with social inequalities, relationships, memory and identity.
Story
The main body of the work centres on Bella Baxter, a woman whose early life and identity are the subject of some ambiguity. That ambiguity is complicated by her husband Archibald McCandless's autobiography, "Episodes from the Early Life of a Scottish Public Health Officer," which distorts the truth about his life with Bella. He claims that she was a corpse, resurrected by McCandless’s colleague, the scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter, who had her brain swapped with that of her unborn foetus, resulting in her having an infant’s mind. While designed to be Baxter’s companion, her sexual appetite causes her to pursue other men, including McCandless and a foppish lawyer named Duncan Wedderburn, with whom she elopes and embarks on a hedonistic odyssey around Europe, Northern Africa, and Central Asia.
This narrative is followed by Bella's (or Victoria's) refutation of its facts, suggesting that her "poor fool" of a husband has concocted a life for her from the prevailing gothic and romantic motifs of the period: it "positively stinks of all that was morbid in that most morbid of centuries". This is reinforced by the novel's intricate echoes of
Mary Shelley
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel '' Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also ...
's ''
Frankenstein
''Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. ''Frankenstein'' tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific ...
''.
These fictitious historical documents are prefaced with an introduction by one Alasdair Gray, who presents himself as the editor of the following text, and relates the "discovery" of the papers by his real-life friends, Michael Donnelly and Elspeth King. The introduction also hosts a critique of Glasgow City Council's treatment of its culture and heritage in the neglect of the local history museum, and a brief mention of Glasgow's time as the
European Capital of Culture in 1990, which would be the subject of a more sustained satire in his novel ''
Something Leather''.
Film adaptation
A film adaptation of the book is in production with
Yorgos Lanthimos
Georgios "Yorgos" Lanthimos ( el, Γιώργος Λάνθιμος, Giórgos Lánthimos, ; born 23 September 1973) is a Greek film director, film producer, screenwriter, photographer, theatre director and former professional basketball player. Sin ...
set to direct and
Tony McNamara writing the script. The cast includes
Emma Stone,
Willem Dafoe
Willem James Dafoe (; born July 22, 1955) is an American actor. He is the recipient of various accolades, including the Volpi Cup for Best Actor, in addition to receiving nominations for four Academy Awards, four Screen Actors Guild Awards, t ...
,
Ramy Youssef,
Margaret Qualley
Sarah Margaret Qualley (born October 23, 1994) is an American actress and model. A daughter of actress Andie MacDowell, she trained as a ballerina in her youth. She made her acting debut with a minor role in the 2013 drama film ''Palo Alto'', a ...
and
Mark Ruffalo
Mark Alan Ruffalo (; born November 22, 1967) is an American actor and producer best known for playing Bruce Banner / Hulk since 2012 in the superhero franchise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and in the television series '' She-Hulk: Attorne ...
among others.
The adaptation is set to be released in theaters on September 8, 2023.
Notes
''Poor Things'' contains illustrations by Alasdair Gray, which the text claims are by the Scottish etcher and illustrator
William Strang
William Strang (13 February 1859 – 12 April 1921) was a Scottish painter and printmaker, notable for illustrating the works of John Bunyan, Bunyan, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Coleridge and Rudyard Kipling, Kipling.
Early life
Strang was bor ...
. There are also punning additions of fragments of images from ''
Gray's Anatomy''. One feature of the novel which has also attracted comment is the page of review quotes which also features a printed erratum strip. Some of these reviews are patently fictitious (such as those from the ''Skiberdeen Eagle'' and the ''Private Nose'') and others are attributed to real publications, but seem so harsh that their authenticity is called into question.
References
Sources
*
Further reading
*"Alasdair Gray, ''Poor Things''". 2008. In Nick Bentley, ''Contemporary British Fiction'', 44-52. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. .
*Kaczvinsky, Donald P. "Making up for Lost Time": Scotland, Stories, and the Self in Alasdair Gray's" Poor Things." ''Contemporary Literature'' 42.4 (2001): 775-799.
*Hobsbaum, Philip. "Unreliable Narrators: Poor Things and its Paradigms." ''The Glasgow Review'' 3 (1995): 37.
*McCormick, Ian D., "Alasdair Gray and the Making of the modern Scottish Grotesque" in ''Proceedings of the Conference on Regional Europe: Voice and Form'' (Vitoria, Spain; University of Liverpool, 1994)
*Gray, Alasdair, James Kelman, and Tom Toremans. "An Interview with Alasdair Gray and James Kelman." ''Contemporary Literature'' 44.4 (2003): 565-586.
*March, Cristie. "Bella and the Beast (and a Few Dragons, Too): Alasdair Gray and the Social Resistance of the Grotesque." ''Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction'' 43.4 (2002): 323-346.
*Hammond, Jennifer. ''Alasdair Gray: A Postmodernist Reading of" Lanark"," 1982 Janine," and" Poor Things".'' Diss. University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 1999.
*McMunnigall, Alan. "Alasdair Gray and Postmodemism." ''Studies in Scottish Literature'' 33.1 (2004): 26.
{{Guardian Fiction Prize
1992 British novels
Costa Book Award-winning works
Novels by Alasdair Gray
Novels set in Scotland
Novels set in Glasgow
1992 in Scotland
Bloomsbury Publishing books
British novels adapted into films