Divided Loyalties, Changing Landscapes: William McIlvanney’s Laidlaw Novels

Peacock

Abstract

This article looks at the three William McIlvanney novels featuring detective Jack Laidlaw – Laidlaw (1977), The Papers of Tony Veitch (1983), and Strange Loyalties (1991). It examines the shift from third-person narration in the first two books to first-person in the third and sees it as part of a changing perspective not only on the character of Laidlaw, who, it is argued, retreats into a personalized mythologization of his community and his country, but also on the Scottish landscape. Laidlaw's return to Ayrshire in Strange Loyalties leads to a flowering of organic but essentially static metaphors of soil and national identity. These metaphors, ultimately, are atavistic and exclusive of that which Laidlaw considers outwith his personal vision of Scottishness.

Citation

Peacock. (2013). Divided Loyalties, Changing Landscapes: William McIlvanney’s Laidlaw Novels. English, 69 - 86 (17). https://doi.org/10.1093/english/eft001

• Publication Date: Mar 1, 2013
• Journal: English
• Print ISSN: 0013-8215
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Pages: 69 - 86 (17)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/english/eft001
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/english/eft001