Product Description

Joe is a drifter who works as a hired hand on a barge traveling the Clyde River between Glasgow and Edinburgh. As the story opens, he finds the corpse of a young woman drifting downstream. Was it an accident? Suicide? Murder? As the police investigate and arrest a suspect, it becomes apparent that Joe knew the dead woman and has more information than he's telling. Meanwhile, an unspoken attraction has developed between Joe and the wife of the barge skipper. Soon to be released as a film, this first novel by Scottish beat writer Alexander Trocchi is an absorbing existential thriller -- a lost gem of world literature reminiscent of Camus, Bukowski, and Burroughs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1044240 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 152 pages

Review
"Everyone should read Young Adam."--Times Literary Supplement

Review

About the Author

Customer Reviews

I must admit...
...that I purchased this book because a movie adaptation starring Ewan Mcgregor is currently in the works... I had never even heard of Alexander Trocchi before reading this (his first novel, originally published in 1954). The story is relatively simple; it is told from the viewpoint of Joe, the hired hand on a barge that traverses the Clyde river between Glasgow and Edinburgh. One morning (on page 2), he pulls the body of a woman out of the river, and that event sets the story in motion. This is really a character driven narrative and I found it very easy to relate to Joe and his environment, even though I am 50 years and about 6000 miles removed from it. As the story progresses, and more and more about Joe's past is gradually revealed, the book becomes quite engrossing. Trocchi has a way of taking incredibly mundane experiences and describing them using the most beautiful, flowing prose...I can't understand why more people aren't familiar with this author's work as he's easily in the same league as Bukowski and Burroughs... Overall, I highly recommend this book and I can't wait to read more of Trocchi's work!

The Scottish Beatbox
The Pete Best of the Beat generation, Trocchi ran with Ginsberg, Burroughs, et al, but never achieved their lasting fame. He paid the bills by writing pornographic works, but this brief novel--while certainly sexual--is cut of a different cloth, and is invariably compared to the Camus masterpiece "The Stranger". Written fifty years ago, the simple story is told by Joe, an itinerant worker who works on a barge that hauls coal and other loads between Glasgow and Edinburgh. He lives on board with the meaty ex-sailor, his solid wife Ella, and their child. The book opens with their discovery of a woman's corpse floating in the water, a woman who is somehow linked to Joe. After reporting it to the police, they continue on their way, and over the next several days Joe discovers that he is attracted to Ella. However, after the initial excitement of their affair it doesn't take long for him to become bored with her. Indeed, that's Joe's problem in general, as he states two-thirds of the way into the book: "It has always been that way with me as far as I can remember. I am a rootless kind of man. Often I find myself anxious to become involved with other people, but I am no sooner involved than I wish to be free again."

Of course, what that means is that he is unable or unwilling to form emotional attachments with people, and ends up hurting them in one way or another. As his and Ella's story wends to its obvious conclusion, a man is arrested for the murder of the floating woman. The tension mounts as Joe worries whether or not his relationship to her will come to light. In the end he is presented with a very difficult ethical choice and makes the same decision most of us would in his shoes. Indeed, for all his self-professed status as an outsider, he still works when he has to, and manages to act quite in line with the established patriarchal sexual modes. In perhaps the books most memorable scene, Joe recounts how an argument with a girlfriend led to his sexual assault of her using household food products ("I didn't know whether she was laughing or crying"), only to end with "I felt her arms close about me and she kissed me on the lips." By the end, it's a little hard to know what to make of the story, and it's not at all clear that Joe is a particularly reliable narrator. Of potential interest to those interested in expanding their knowledge of the beat writers or of modern Scottish literature, but unlikely to move others. Recently made into a film starring Ewan MacGregor that is reputed to be quite faithful to the book.

A Much Overlooked Author
"Young Adam" was a suggested read by my reading partner. How he discovered Alexander Trocchi is beyond me. But I found his writing style, as well as his own outlook of the the world incredibly interesting.

Trocchi's works were said to have been exiled out of Scottish literature, along with Trocchi physically. His writings stretched to the outer limits of moral acceptability. Holding anti-establishment attitudes, a lack of "work ethics", and sexual promiscuity, Trocchi simply tells it as it is through his own philosophy, which allows the reader to concentrate on the story and examine the characters as they unfold. A strong narrative voice guides you through the events of this simple, yet thought provoking storyline.

The story is told by Joe, a barge worker, who shares quarters with Leslie, his wife Ella, and their son, which Joe often refers to as "the kid". The body of a dead woman is found floating in the river, and taken aboard the barge. As the story unfolds, the connection between the dead woman, the circumstances of her death, and two innocent men, caught between a rock and a hard place, nervously emerge and come together. Lingering in the back of your mind, the question of fate or freedom for either of these men.

The question this story evoked in my mind was simply, "What would I do if I were in this man's position?" You will "walk a mile" in Joe's shoes in "Young Adam" But it still leaves this question unanswered.

Read "Young Adam" and see if you can discover a solution to this moral dilemma. I tip my hat to you Alexander Trocchi, ya done good!!!