Its Colours They Are Fine

First published in 1977, Alan Spence's debut collection of stories, Its Colours They Are Fine, renders the environs and inhabitants of Glasgow with glass-like clarity.
 
This new edition of the celebrated collection features an introduction by Janice Galloway. The first stories offer a portrait of rough-and-tumble children who cause trouble in the city's many tenements. Spence's Scottish dialect captures the national character; adult biases, such as anti-Catholic prejudices, are transmitted in the speech of somewhat innocent children. Part two focuses on adults struggling to make a living against the cold, gray atmosphere of the city, while part three features a first-person narrator, a writer of sorts who travels between London and Glasgow.
 
The streets of Spence's Glasgow can be cruel and hardscrabble, but despite the dreary atmosphere, the miraculous is never out of reach; religious symbols abound. In "Tinsel," the trite Christmas decoration provides something of the everlasting in the eyes of the child protagonist. In "Silver in the Lamplight," Spence's impressionistic descriptions of the city add wonder to the narrative that focuses on juvenile characters causing mayhem. It's perhaps in "The Palace" that Spence offers the quintessential portrait of the Glasgow denizen. Two poor old men meet in an enclosed botanical garden, a refuge from the cold weather, and swap stories. One of the men is described as having "that tattered dignity." "His very eccentricity was a kind of affirmation," Spence writes. "There was life in his eyes, in his voice."
 
Its Colours They Are Fine is a Scottish classic that Americans will enjoy. The prose is as beautiful as it is bittersweet. --Scott Neuffer, writer, poet, editor of trampset
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