Part true crime, part epic poem, part tabloid sensationalism, part essay, part rant, part cultural history, Cry, Boy, Cry is, for the most part, written in a colloquial voice made of many, one that is shouting at sculptor and convicted murderer Jimmy Boyle. It is a book about Glasgow, it is (inadvertently) a book about masculinity, set in a city that spouts a lot of sentimental shit about itself. It is a book about artists - it is a book about escape artists.
It is cobbled together from things other people have said. It is not so much a piece of writing as a rearranging of what is already there. Whole sentences have been ripped from here to there and stuck together more in the genre of Frankenstein’s monster than any measured attempt at non-fiction, which it is and it isn't (half of it is gossip, and most of it is plagiarised).
