Even though Blackden is actually Duncan McLean's first novel, it is only now being published in America. Blackden is the story of Patrick Hunter, an 18-year-old auctioneer's apprentice, and his life over a three-day lost weekend. He rides his bicycle around the village, he meets people, loses his bicycle, and his comic and dark experiences become the bulk of the book. Blackden is a somewhat bleak, but also a tender, gentle and realistic novel. Patrick reminds me of Stephen Dedalus at the end of Portrait of an Artist fleeing from Ireland so he could become a writer, instead of becoming a drunk like his father. Patrick sees people in his village leading lives that go nowhere, and at the end he sees an image of the wall of death.
While Patrick Hunter may choose to leave Blackden someday, and ride away on a missing bike, Duncan McLean has definitely found his own voice as a writer. He seems fit to write and to work on a small island with waves washing over. Over the past few years he has created an impressive body of work.