From Scenes Like These

<p><b>Shortlisted for the first ever Booker Prize<br><br>'A masterpiece' – Douglas Stuart, author of <i>Shuggie Bain</i><br><br><i>'</i>An extraordinary novel' – Michael Magee, author of <i>Close to Home<br><br>'</i>It deserves its modern classic status' –<i> The Times</i><br><br>It’s the west of Scotland in the 1950s. New houses are going up. Factories are opening. </b><br><br>But Dunky Logan, a 15-year-old brought up in a tenement flat in working-class Kilcaddie, is ditching school to be a labourer on a local farm. Dead set on becoming a hard case, he wants to work shoulder to shoulder with so-called real men.<br><br>Irish Catholic Mary O’Donnell arrives at the farmhouse as the new maid. She is pregnant - no boyfriend in sight. But she’s smart, and she has a plan to get herself up in the world.<br><br>As Dunky is swallowed up by a vicious cycle of violence, betrayal, and booze, Mary becomes entangled in a savage family feud.<br><br><b>Now there’s no going back, not for either of them.</b><br><br><b>With an introduction by James Robertson.</b></p>