Poor Things

Poor Things is a book that grows with you, like all the best books do. The first time I read it I was twenty-one, and I found it intriguing, but difficult and a little baffling. Over the years I've come to love it dearly, discovering something new each time I pick it up, and just when I thought I couldn't love it any more, here we are.

Despite Alasdair Gray's iconic status in Scotland, reading this book reminds me that he's still massively underappreciated. Poor Things is nothing short of a masterpiece, exploring an array of far-reaching themes including feminism, the morality of medicine and the ethics of science, class distinctions and social inequality, colonialism, memory, and identity, both personal and national. It's a narrative within a narrative within a narrative, with not one but two unreliable narrators, giving Nabokov a run for his money, and at the heart of it all lies an exquisite Frankenstein-esque pastiche of the Victorian Gothic that is endearing and terrifying and everything in between. On top of all that, as if that wasn't enough, it's a love letter to Alasdair's beloved Glasgow.

If you haven't already, I urge you to pick it up - then gimme a ding when you're done so we can chat about it!