Search

This article builds on Jones’s previous work on masculinity in Scottish fiction, probing the ongoing process of moving beyond dominant paradigms of masculinity in Scottish writing. The analysis explores the haunting power of masculine spectres and their return to centrality in twenty-first century Scottish fiction. The article juxtaposes Emily Mackie’s novels And This is True (2010) and In Search of Solace (2014), which both remain fixated upon masculinity with Ali Smith’s There but for the (2011), which resists the urge to re-centre masculinity despite its central male character, and offers a contrasting alternative to dominant modes of male identity.