Eavesdropping on Myself: An Outsider's Boyhood in Glasgow - Paperback

by Norman MacLean (Author)

In Eavesdropping on Myself, Norman chronicles his boyhood in Glasgow and explores the push-pull of two cultures: working-class Glaswegian and first-generation Hebridean

This is Norman Maclean at his best - by turns sharp, funny and melancholic. The original lad o' pairts, Maclean has a literary voice shaped, but never confined, by the places and languages of his youth. Eavesdropping on Myself finds him picking over his childhood with an unsparing eye. We knew he was a master storyteller; only now are we getting the measure of his own story. No reader could forget it. - Fraser MacDonald

Norman Maclean is one of the most resonant voices inScotland. With one voice he articulates the tangled dualities of Scottish experience today: of tradition and modernity, highland and lowland, rural and urban, working class and middle class, local and worldly. His perspective straddles different classes, different languages and different lives, at once divided and unifi ed. If Norman is speaking, then we should be listening. - Jamie Chambers

Author Biography

Norman Maclean was born in Glasgow in December 1936 to Hebridean parents: Peigi Bheag, nighean Thormoid Ailein, from Cladach a' Bhaile Shear, North Uist, and Niall Mòr, mac Iain Eoghainn Ruaidh, from 'The Green' on the island of Tiree. Brought up in Glasgow, he was evacuated during the Second World War and spent some of his formative years in both Strathan at the head of Loch Arkaig and in Grìminis, Benbecula. Maclean who is best known as a stand-up comedian, singer and piper, is also an accomplished writer in both English and Gaelic. In Eavesdropping on Myself he chronicles his boyhood in Glasgow and explores the push-pull of two cultures: working-class Glaswegian and first-generation Hebridean.