Frank Woods (2019) Where the Bridge Lies.

Frank Woods (2019) Where the Bridge Lies.

Where the Bridge Lies was Scottish novel of the week recently, which is quite an achievement for debut author Frank Woods. He can be proud of that. This novel should tick all the boxes for me. It’s set in Clydebank. And Clydebank is where I set most of my stories. It features a family that died in the Clydebank Blitz. I’d guess it’s loosely based on the Rocks’ family, who apart from the father, who agreed to work his son’s shift, died not far from a street in which I lived for years. It also has a second-strand storyline set in a castle used as a school. Yeh, that one that’s on the way to Drymen. I know somebody that worked in it and I wrote an unpublished novel, loosely based in another castle, Lennox Castle. I know exactly how Ervin Goffman’s total institutions are organised and most schools, especially residential schools, tick the boxes. And some of us remember Billy Connelly’s story of working in the shipyards and setting a rag alight in the troughs they used to shite in and sailing it like a model ship down wind and burning the worker’s arses. Hilarious. Not really.  In other words I’m like one of those street bores that ask you how you are and you can’t get a word in edgeways as they yitter on about themselves. I should be talking about Frank Wood’s novel and not my own well-documented addiction to scribbling words nobody bothers reading. And I don’t blame them. So what I’m trying to say is I never finished this novel. I got to page 58.

The protagonist Keir Connor, a photojournalist who suffers from post-traumatic-stress disorder after working in Vietnam, is taking a sabbatical in Clydebank and trying to trace his long-lost family is in alternate chapters with the night of the Clydebank Blitz and the aftermath. I even get a mention, Father O’Donnell.

You’ve got to love your characters. I didn’t. You might. Read on.   

Comments

Thanks for passing on the good news of my novel ‘Where the Bridge Lies’ being awarded Scottish Book of the Week. You might be interested in other recent online comments too: 

https://dura-dundee.org.uk/2019/07/01/where-the-bridge-lies/

https://booksfromscotland.com/2019/06/where-the-bridge-lies/

The flaming lavvy rag story was one of many my father brought home from the shipyard to enrich my childhood. I’m the same age as Billy Connolly. Maybe he first heard it from his Da too?

All best

Frank Woods