Drug addled, alcohol fuelled, expletives laden, yet with an abundance of artistic talent and verve, Connor Alexander is the brain behind, and the frontman of the rock band, The Ossians. Named after a mercurial, albeit obscure Scottish poet, the band is anything but inconspicuous. Formed with Connor’s twin Kate, his girlfriend Hannah, and best mate, Danny, The Ossians fast gain repute and key record companies from London are in pursuit to get the quartet signed.
Doug Johnstone’s The Ossians is an insane, raw, and savagely emotional roller coaster that follows the troughs and peaks of a spontaneous rock band and the unpredictable quirks and eccentricities of its lead man. Determine to reclaiming his Scottish identity by understanding the country’s nuts, bolts, and brass tacks, Connor comes up with a plan of organising an Ossian tour covering some of the most forlorn, isolated, bleak and windswept obscure regions littering the Scotland’s landscape. The band’s pliant manager, Paul, doubles up as their driver as he meanders through Arbroath, Aberdeen, Inverness, Thurso, Ullapool, Kyle of Lochalsh, and Fort William.
At most of the concerts, Connor guzzling gin and whiskey straight from the bottle, treating joints as perfectly ordinary extensions of his fingers and substituting speed for chewing gum, succeeds beyond imagination in intolerably irking perfectly random people, who use his face as a ready canvas for practising the art of mugging. Just when the rest of the band has almost had it with Connor, the brash singer gets involved with a dangerous drug dealer Nick….
Totally in the line of Trainspotting, Doug Johnstone’s work sounds and reads like its worthy successor. The hues and shades of Irvine Welsh leapt at the reader from many a page, passage and paragraph. One can in fact be forgiven in assuming that The Ossians is an unabashed homage to the inimitable art of Irvine Welsh. Cringe worthy language, unabashedly shameful deeds crescendo towards a conclusion that is sure to leave the reader reeling.
Whether it is a personal bias or whether some other readers have noticed the fact too, the one glaring and perhaps avoidable is a slight yet unmistakable ‘woke’ tinge that unexpectedly appears as the book races to its conclusion. The highlight of the book is the description and treatment of the gloomy environs of Scotland. There is not just an acceptance but a wholehearted embrace, a fiercely possessive spirit that seems to cock a snook at sceptics and sniggering elites. The indictment of urban decay and the permeations of such rot to even the innermost hinterlands is not so much bemoaned as unequivocally castigated. The contrast is brought out by the fact that although Connor calls Edinburgh home, his attachment is for the fishing town of Arbroath where he was brought up.
The Ossians, is a breezy, nervous and enervating read that leaves the reader not just in a state of excited exhaustion but also permitting her to introspect and reflect upon the weird and wonderful mindset of mankind.
This review is part of the Ossians Virtual Book Tour and has absolutely no monetary strings or emoluments attached to it.
