Product Description
The author of Swing Hammer Swing! depicts the eccentric characters that populate the Centaur Car Company automotive plant, from Tombstone Telfer, who believes that smiling causes cancer, to the smelly shop steward, Curly Brogan." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The Martians Are Coming !
"The Devil's Carousel" was first published in 1996 and is a collection of short stories based around the Centaur Car Company's plant in Glasgow . Each story follows a different lead character, from the shopfloor right up to senior management - though one story's lead character does, occasionally, play a bit part in another story. The plant is not presented as a pleasant place to work - industrial injuries are clearly common enough, while the number of heart attacks and strokes has led to the local hospital naming a ward in the company's honour. There's even the occasional nervous breakdown...

Things in the plant run far from smoothly, and there is a slightly antagonistic relationship between the management and the workforce. The working conditions clearly don't take the workforce's best interests into account, though the grievances are probably nurtured by the shop stewards. (KIKBAK, a very unofficial and clued-in newssheet probably doesn't help either, and several articles also appear in the book). However, the management don't do themselves any favours : they keep themselves so far above the shopfloor, they are widely known as the Martians. (Only one Martian, Mal Kibbley, earns a starring role in one of the stories. The Martians are keen to build a top-of-the-range car, though they want it built without the workforce kept in the dark about it...accordingly, when the workforce find out what the Marians are trying to pull, they'll do everything the can to sabotage this perfect car's production). Unsurprisingly, the plant is rumoured to be in some trouble with the company's head office believed to be considering job cuts. Having said that, there are suggestions - as the book progresses - that the Bilbao plant is in a little more danger.

Most of the stories are about the ordinary workers - not the big picture - with each story having a different character taking the lead. (However, one story's lead character may, occasionally, pop up as another ctory's supporting character from time to time). There are a few stories that see characters die or suffer from breakdowns, which isn't too surprising given the health problems widely suffered by the workforce. One of the book's more memorable survivors, however, is Curley Brogan - such an effective shop steward that the Martians are actually afraid of him. However, since his personal hygiene leaves a lot to be desired, his colleagues aren't overly fond of him either. Curley isn't one of the characters who die - however, he decides to have a little fun for a day or two by 'faking' his own death...a plan that, naturally, causes him a little bother.

However, nobody can find anything good to say aboutTwitcher Haskins - another string character. Twitcher - the nickname comes from the fact he's a keen birdwatcher - is a very petty individual and the plant's Security Chief. (The plant's security officers are known, colloquially, as the snipes - as the Security Chief, Twitcher is also known as the Supersnipe). Naturally, he has an arch-nemesis - the Magpie - who is responsible for all major acts of pilfering in the plant...and there's nothing Twitcher would like better than to cap his retirement with the Magpie's capture...

A very enjoyable book overall, and very easily read.

Hilarious, dark look at life on the production line
Highly recommended to those with a sharp, biting wit who can appreciate true irony. Witness how quickly paranoia can spread throughout a car company and the way these "characters" handle the rumors. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (6)

Puns and poetry and philosophy, oh my!
This tuneful novel traces the adventures of Tom Clay through the waning days of The Gorbals, a slum in Glasgow that is yielding slowly to the wrecking ball of urban renewal. But the story is slight compared with the voice, which is by turns musical, poetic, punny, and amateur-philosophical. Torrington, like his protagonist, isn't afraid to careen between the high and the low, from Pascal's "Pong-sees" (as railway driver, Wee Tulley, calls them) to decrepit domino players ("those rowdy spot-mortems") drinking stout in equally decrepit pubs. Throughout the book, it was the working-class Glaswegian cadences, whether lilting or gutteral, that kept me charmed.

Brilliant but difficult.
It's the story of a week in the life of unemployed, aspiring writer, Tom Clay who is living in the Gorbals slums of Glasgow as they are being torn down in the 60's. His pregnant wife is in hospital. He has a one-night stand with a woman whose husband he fears is seeking revenge on him. His wife's family keep nagging him to get a job and a hair cut. It doesn't have much plot although it's full of incidents and digressions. Clay is involved in various strategies to get money. He has intellectual interests and may be writing.
The main attraction is the quality of the writing. This is witty and erudite but prolix, and demands close attention. The humor, although often ingenious, becomes somewhat repetitious by the end. The plumbing of the Gorbals was very primitive and this gives rise to recurrent scatological themes.

An unexpected delight
More than a year after receiving this book as a Christmaspresent from a sibling whose literary taste I was beginning toquestion, I at last opened it.Within minutes I regretted not havingdone so much sooner.This first novel is, in short, a magnificentwork, a fact that hits you from the first page.It is said that theauthor spent 30 years writing Swing, Hammer, Swing.I believe this,as the facility with language, the ability to convey the tragichilarity of life, the penetrating insights sandwiched betweenslapstick picaresque, all of these features, so evident in the novel,betoken an author of far more experience than one would expect from afirst-time novelist.In fact the 30-year gestation of the novel goesa good way toward accounting for its apparent paradox -- the fact thatit is marked by youthful exhuberence and playfulness, yet conveyedwith all the indicia of a seasoned word-monger at the top of his game.

I was pleased to see reviews placing this work alongsideJoyce's and Pynchon's, but I would put Torrington closer to Donleavy.The picaresque journie of Thomas Clay -- haunted throughout the weekthat we spend with him by omens of his mortality -- reminds me more ofthe misadventures of Sebastian Dangerfield (The Ginger Man), CorneliusChristian (Fairy Tale of New York), and Darcy Dancer (The Adventuresof Darcy Dancer, Gentleman), than they do of the perambulations ofTyrone Slothrop (Gravity's Rainbow) or Leopold Bloom (Ulysses).

Although Torrington may well be the Scots' Donleavy, to pushthe comparison too far would deny the originality of the novel. Andwhile I laughed out loud throughout, drawing concerned looks fromfellow patrons of the cafe where I read most of the book, this is notjust a funny novel.'Memento mori' images pervade the novel --notably and hilariously in the form of a certain outhouse specter (oris it a gumshoe, or bill collector?) With these images come an ominoussense that an era is passing, that what Tom Clay (and the readersharing his experiences) knows and loves is on the brink ofdestruction.Nothing less than modernity's not-always-creativedestruction is following us as we accompany Tom in his efforts to slowdown this inexorable march, to hold onto a corner of the world that wefind familiar and homely -- heimlich as Freud would have it -- whileknowing that the hammer will soon shatter it.The week we spend withTom Clay is the last one during which that architectural marvel andsocial microcosm known as the Gorbals existed, before being reduced torubble in the name of humane 'slum clearance.'It is a heavy andpoignant metaphor.What lies ahead we don't know.We know that itwill be unheimlich.But, after we have survived this December week inthe company of Tom Clay, we do know that the Solstice has passed, andtherefore the darkness will lessen.

Concerned with mortality the novel is, but neither Tom Clay,nor Jeff Torrington, is consumed with morbidity.To the contrary, Tomis determined to wring as much joy in living as he can out of oneweek, and manages to do so in the unlikely setting of Glasgow inWinter.Torrington takes great pains to show us that this can bedone

"Swing" is the first book that I have read three times!
Jeff Torrington makes a grey Scottish day into a carnival of the absurd. He turns a week-in-the-life of one man into a pilgrimage of mediocrity, and a dance of celebration.I have never eaten a book up word for deliciousword like this varitable feast.You don't know me and I certainly do notknow you, but I guarantee that you will love this book.

Add it to yourcart, and pay your electric bill in advance, because you will be up allnight!!!!

Funny
An excellent humourous account of life as one of Glasgows less well heeled inhabitants. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Jeff Torrington, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thomson Gale. The length of the entry is 476 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Product Description
Jeff Torrongton's startlingly original first novel is set in Glasccow, 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 prematurly and he is waiting for news of their transfer. ... Read more