A Glasgow Trilogy: The Boy Who Wanted Peace, Grace and Miss Partridge, MR Alfred M.A.

Even with the current convention-breaking renaissance in Scottish literature headed by the likes of James Kelman and Irvine Welsh, there's something to be said for the previous generation's more traditional accomplishments, such as those of Kelman's fellow Glaswegian George Friel (1910-75). Compared to the e-generation's wild style, Friel's novels' dourly ironic, slightly deterministic plots are well-made plays. Typically fixing on a loner or eccentric for a protagonist, such as the aimless adolescent Percy Phinn, the staunch Presbyterian Mrs. Partridge or the superannuated schoolmaster Mr. Alfred, the novels array the supporting cast around them in Friel's vividly realized Glasgow. The separate downfalls of Percy, after discovering a bank robbers' cached loot, and Mr. Alfred, a victim of the modern youth culture, are compelling enough, but it's the surrounding characters that make the books hum with Glasgow's tenement life. In the best of the three, Grace and Mrs. Partridge, Friel orchestrates over half a dozen well-drawn characters in counterpoint with bank employee ""Wee Annie"" Partridge's progressively more disturbing obsession with saving the soul of her downstairs neighbor, 10-year-old Grace. With exacting realism and fine-tuned dialect, these novels are a testament to Friel's posthumously emergent role in Scottish fiction. (Dec.)