Andrew O'Hagan's first novel rightly won a place on the 1999 Booker shortlist. It's the story of three generations of Scottish men: the socialist Hugh, his feckless, alcoholic son Robert and Jamie, the London-based grandson who comes back to Glasgow to be with his dying grandfather. Architecture is an underlying theme in this novel: the composite bricks that can create a family, as well as dividing them from each other and the actual urban architecture of Glasgow, chiefly the tower block apartment where Hugh now lies dying . Perceived as the way forward for urban housing in the 1960s, its transformation into a high rise slum of the 1990s also symbolises the mistakes these men have made in their lives, and the way their dreams turned out differently. The forensic examination of the three men's lives is tough going, but O'Hagan writes so extraordinarily well that he lures you through the pages to the final redemptive word of the novel, which is "love".
