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Stump
" Stump makes you feel that you are reading on the edge of a life in a fierce gale, vulnerable, excited, alive." � The Guardian (London) Wet an spectacular wreckage leads to "powerful forgetting" which leads to "periodics" which lead to the "dry drunks" which go to "immersion" an "enabler" an "therapeutic alliance" an any alternative, any fuckin alternative atropine aversion therapy or Antabuse or ECT or acufuckinpuncture or snakepits or swimming with dolphins an all of that all of it comes completely back to this one pure irreducible a booming heart that burns to drink. It has taken the loss of a limb and a death threat from the Mob to make one Liverpudlian dry out and move to a small seaside town in Wales. But his past life is a recurring nightmare―filth, desperation, and blackouts. And more trouble is only a hundred miles away. Darren and Alastair leave Liverpool, heading south in a rickety old car. They have been sent by their gang boss to wreak violent revenge, but they have only a rough idea of their a one-armed man. Interspersed between the scabrous banter and a pitch-perfect street dialect, Niall Griffiths offers stunning descriptions of the Welsh landscape and a dark, knowing humor. Despite the ever present drugs, violence, and anger, he reveals a fragile humanity. Graywolf is proud to introduce this striking, distinctive voice to American readers.
228 pages, Paperback
First published May 29, 2003
1 person is currently reading
111 people want to read
About the author
Niall Griffiths
33books98followersNiall Griffiths was born in Liverpool to a Welsh/Irish/Romany lineage. He’s been a labourer, a barman, a server of fish and chips, a burglar, a farmhand, a tree feller, a factory worker and many other things too tedious to relate. Now, he’s a full-time writer, living at the foot of a mountain in mid-Wales, with seven novels published, several works of non-fiction and more short stories and radio plays and travel pieces and reviews than he cares to, or possibly even can, count. His fourth novel, Stump, won the Wales Book of the Year Award. A film adaptation of his third novel, Kelly+Victor, won a BAFTA. He’s now working on the screenplay for his sixth, Wreckage. His latest novel is Broken Ghost.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
December 9, 2019
A man lives a simple life in a Welsh seaside town. He grows veg in the garden, looks after his pet rabbit and plays cards with his only real friend. He struggles to overcome past addiction to drink and drugs but just about stays on the straight and narrow. He bears the scars of his former life - not least the fact that he is missing an arm, the result of an infection that he was too wasted to take to the doctors before it was too late.
He needs to keep a low profile as he has upset a drug dealer back in his home town, Liverpool.
Unbeknownst to him the drug dealer has found out where he is and sends a couple of scallies over to deliver a punishment beating. Cue road trip.
A story of a man with a past, existing and exulting in small pleasures. A pale imitation of the highs and (mostly) lows of his previous life. Cut with a comic caper as two coke hungry clueless big city criminals career across the countryside.
A book of contrasts, small town life, an unforgiving land and petty criminals playing the big man. Griffiths writes each in a different voice, which I liked. The description of the landscape feels a bit like Cormac McCarthy in places.
Worth a read. I will look out for more by this author.
He needs to keep a low profile as he has upset a drug dealer back in his home town, Liverpool.
Unbeknownst to him the drug dealer has found out where he is and sends a couple of scallies over to deliver a punishment beating. Cue road trip.
A story of a man with a past, existing and exulting in small pleasures. A pale imitation of the highs and (mostly) lows of his previous life. Cut with a comic caper as two coke hungry clueless big city criminals career across the countryside.
A book of contrasts, small town life, an unforgiving land and petty criminals playing the big man. Griffiths writes each in a different voice, which I liked. The description of the landscape feels a bit like Cormac McCarthy in places.
Worth a read. I will look out for more by this author.
September 29, 2024
I got this book because Niall Griffiths has become a pen-pal of sorts and so felt I should. I knew nothing about the book and honestly didn’t expect to like it because Niall said it is a bit raw. I loved it. I later discovered it won the Wales Book of the Year and deservedly so.
The book covers one day in the life of a man trying to begin life anew in a seaside Welsh village while recovering from drugs, alcoholism, and the amputation of his left arm, and the road trip of two very funny brutes in a beat-up little car with one mission, find a one-armed man who stole money from the gang boss and exact revenge on him.
What makes this book worthwhile is Niall Griffiths� observations on life, addiction and recovery, the struggle to be normal when nothing about your life was ever good or normal. What makes the book more enjoyable than one man’s serious existential search for meaning could be is the dialogue between Darren and Alastair on their car ride.
This book is rich. There were passages of the unnamed one-armed man’s thoughts that I underlined, others that I read to my family, others that I read to co-workers. And the dialogue between Darren and Alastair was laugh out loud funny.
Niall was right that the language is raw, but these are people living on the fringe so the language is authentic, the story, though, is not gratuitously raw. The chapters about the protagonist are told in first person and our protagonist is brutally honest with himself and so us; he shares the puke, the piss, the blood, the stink, but even as he is recalling his lowest moments we feel compassion for him. Niall tells this story without judgement.
The chapters that cover the car ride are told in third person so we aren’t quite as aware of what the two gangsters are thinking, but there are enough clues to what is in the heart of Alastair that I just ordered Wreckage to see if Alastair is who I suspect he is. Alastair is not in this brutal profession by choice it seems.
I am officially a fan of Niall Griffiths and will read more of his Transgressive Fiction.
The book covers one day in the life of a man trying to begin life anew in a seaside Welsh village while recovering from drugs, alcoholism, and the amputation of his left arm, and the road trip of two very funny brutes in a beat-up little car with one mission, find a one-armed man who stole money from the gang boss and exact revenge on him.
What makes this book worthwhile is Niall Griffiths� observations on life, addiction and recovery, the struggle to be normal when nothing about your life was ever good or normal. What makes the book more enjoyable than one man’s serious existential search for meaning could be is the dialogue between Darren and Alastair on their car ride.
This book is rich. There were passages of the unnamed one-armed man’s thoughts that I underlined, others that I read to my family, others that I read to co-workers. And the dialogue between Darren and Alastair was laugh out loud funny.
Niall was right that the language is raw, but these are people living on the fringe so the language is authentic, the story, though, is not gratuitously raw. The chapters about the protagonist are told in first person and our protagonist is brutally honest with himself and so us; he shares the puke, the piss, the blood, the stink, but even as he is recalling his lowest moments we feel compassion for him. Niall tells this story without judgement.
The chapters that cover the car ride are told in third person so we aren’t quite as aware of what the two gangsters are thinking, but there are enough clues to what is in the heart of Alastair that I just ordered Wreckage to see if Alastair is who I suspect he is. Alastair is not in this brutal profession by choice it seems.
I am officially a fan of Niall Griffiths and will read more of his Transgressive Fiction.
January 12, 2025
The beauty of this bleak book caught me completely off guard. “Bleak� and “beauty� go together often enough in my experience for natural spaces, but it’s rare for me to encounter human stories that combine them. The novel takes an unflinching look at addiction, recovery, and violence. It resists platitudes and generalizations about these very common experiences, so at times it’s uncomfortable. But it’s also very real and alive, by turns grumpy and hopeful. The prose sings. There is dialect, and normally I don’t like books written in dialect, but this I could hear in my head so well it was more beautiful than if it had been in standard English.
The novel alternates between two plotlines: a man who has had his left arm amputated (this narrative is told in first person), and two men in a car driving from Liverpool into Wales (told in third person). The action of the book takes place in a single day, and Griffiths pays out the information about the day’s actions in a way that unfolds everything significant about who each of the characters is. He kept me in suspense right through the book, which is rare in my reading experience.
One of the delights in reading this was Griffiths� mastery in disclosing information about these three individuals and how they might be connected. It’s not till the middle of the book that we get the first concrete clue. This worked well for me. I built a rapport between me as the reader and the protagonist (the “I� character) whose name we never learn. The book starts out with him, listening in on his struggles to get through his day without half an arm. As he moves through his day, it’s as if he warms up to us readers and begins to trust us enough to tell more and more of his story. I can’t say I’ve ever read a book before that was as much about the character assessing me as it is about me assessing the character(s). As the man trusts his reader more, the pace of revelation accelerates.
The men in the car, Darren and Alastair, are different. I don’t think Griffiths means us to warm up to them. They are thugs sent on a mission of vengeance by their gangster boss. I found it interesting that while the “I� narrator is not named, these two are. I’m not exactly sure what significance that has, but the whole book is so carefully constructed that I’m sure it is significant and not merely a logistical choice to differentiate the two. (At the moment I’m inclined to think that withholding the name of the protagonist draws us into his experiences of addiction and hardship, whereas naming him would have “othered� him and made it easier to pat ourselves on the back for having made better choices and not gotten ourselves into trouble. This novel very much does not let anyone off the hook for how they choose to live in each moment.) Of the two, Darren is bullying and aggrieved. He abuses Alastair throughout the journey, and clearly relishes the prospect of inflicting grievous bodily harm. Alastair is much more appealing. He has an ancestral connection to Wales, and as they drive farther into Wales we get some glimpses of his past. He retains a degree of humanity that Darren does not, partly under the influence of these memories, and one of my few criticisms of the book is that while we see the contradiction between his character and his participation in thuggery, we never really discover how he wound up doing this, or how he feels about the contradiction.
I loved Griffiths� lyrical descriptions of the Welsh landscape. The wild harshness of the mountains is vividly evoked and linked to the long history both of English incursions and manmade damage to the environment. Wales itself seems to be as much a supporting character as a place. I noticed when I looked up the name Darren that (at least according to Wikipedia) while there is disagreement about the origin of the name, the word itself occurs often in Welsh place names, and means “Edge.� Darren is the kind of figure that I think of as being on the edge of losing his humanity. But one of the things I like about this book is that it resists simple black and white categories. It seemed to me that Griffiths might be inviting us to consider human violence in parallel to addiction, as something that might arise from a similar place within us, but also as something from which there can be recovery, though any recovery is as surely an unending process of hard work as recovery from addiction.
I read Stump at the recommendation of a GR friend without really expecting to like it, and now I am plotting when I can get my hands on another novel by Niall Griffiths. He seems to be little known in America, and I hope that will change, if this is at all representative of his writing.
The novel alternates between two plotlines: a man who has had his left arm amputated (this narrative is told in first person), and two men in a car driving from Liverpool into Wales (told in third person). The action of the book takes place in a single day, and Griffiths pays out the information about the day’s actions in a way that unfolds everything significant about who each of the characters is. He kept me in suspense right through the book, which is rare in my reading experience.
One of the delights in reading this was Griffiths� mastery in disclosing information about these three individuals and how they might be connected. It’s not till the middle of the book that we get the first concrete clue. This worked well for me. I built a rapport between me as the reader and the protagonist (the “I� character) whose name we never learn. The book starts out with him, listening in on his struggles to get through his day without half an arm. As he moves through his day, it’s as if he warms up to us readers and begins to trust us enough to tell more and more of his story. I can’t say I’ve ever read a book before that was as much about the character assessing me as it is about me assessing the character(s). As the man trusts his reader more, the pace of revelation accelerates.
The men in the car, Darren and Alastair, are different. I don’t think Griffiths means us to warm up to them. They are thugs sent on a mission of vengeance by their gangster boss. I found it interesting that while the “I� narrator is not named, these two are. I’m not exactly sure what significance that has, but the whole book is so carefully constructed that I’m sure it is significant and not merely a logistical choice to differentiate the two. (At the moment I’m inclined to think that withholding the name of the protagonist draws us into his experiences of addiction and hardship, whereas naming him would have “othered� him and made it easier to pat ourselves on the back for having made better choices and not gotten ourselves into trouble. This novel very much does not let anyone off the hook for how they choose to live in each moment.) Of the two, Darren is bullying and aggrieved. He abuses Alastair throughout the journey, and clearly relishes the prospect of inflicting grievous bodily harm. Alastair is much more appealing. He has an ancestral connection to Wales, and as they drive farther into Wales we get some glimpses of his past. He retains a degree of humanity that Darren does not, partly under the influence of these memories, and one of my few criticisms of the book is that while we see the contradiction between his character and his participation in thuggery, we never really discover how he wound up doing this, or how he feels about the contradiction.
I loved Griffiths� lyrical descriptions of the Welsh landscape. The wild harshness of the mountains is vividly evoked and linked to the long history both of English incursions and manmade damage to the environment. Wales itself seems to be as much a supporting character as a place. I noticed when I looked up the name Darren that (at least according to Wikipedia) while there is disagreement about the origin of the name, the word itself occurs often in Welsh place names, and means “Edge.� Darren is the kind of figure that I think of as being on the edge of losing his humanity. But one of the things I like about this book is that it resists simple black and white categories. It seemed to me that Griffiths might be inviting us to consider human violence in parallel to addiction, as something that might arise from a similar place within us, but also as something from which there can be recovery, though any recovery is as surely an unending process of hard work as recovery from addiction.
I read Stump at the recommendation of a GR friend without really expecting to like it, and now I am plotting when I can get my hands on another novel by Niall Griffiths. He seems to be little known in America, and I hope that will change, if this is at all representative of his writing.
January 6, 2022
Veoma dobar roman, prožet žargonom, koji verno oslikava (unutrašnji) svet glavnog junaka, bivšeg alkoholičara koji je ostao bez ruke, i u čitaocu budi saosećanje.
Izvanredan prevod Aleksandre Bajazetov-Vučen.
Izvanredan prevod Aleksandre Bajazetov-Vučen.
April 19, 2011
Niall Griffiths was born in Liverpool and has since moved to Aberystwyth. Both towns have a strong hold on his imagination. His first two novels were set on the west coast of Wales, his third, Stump, re-visited his native city.
Stump is a surprisingly gentle novel, despite the harshness of two of the book's characters, and the hardships endured by its narrator. The story unfolds cleverly: each chapter written from Stump's POV is followed by a chapter written in the third person, consisting mainly of dialogue, and concerning two rather unpleasant yet clueless scousers sent on a mission to track down Stump. The narrator himself is a one-armed ex-alcoholic scouser intent on rebuilding his life in the 'softer' surroundings of a small Welsh town. He is both inspired and challenged by the simplicity of his new life and the rural environment in which he has escaped to, and Griffiths tells his story without great apology or pity. There are some scathing attacks on the 12 step program but recognition also on the narrator's behalf of his own shortcomings and past f*ck-ups, and how they will change his life forever. The plot concludes amusingly but plausibly, and the writing throughout is wonderfully suited to the characters it portrays. This was the first book I've read by Niall Griffiths, and I will be seeking out more in the near future. A very enjoyable read, but you do have to get used to the dialect. It reminded me of On the Road by Jack Kerouac.
Stump is a surprisingly gentle novel, despite the harshness of two of the book's characters, and the hardships endured by its narrator. The story unfolds cleverly: each chapter written from Stump's POV is followed by a chapter written in the third person, consisting mainly of dialogue, and concerning two rather unpleasant yet clueless scousers sent on a mission to track down Stump. The narrator himself is a one-armed ex-alcoholic scouser intent on rebuilding his life in the 'softer' surroundings of a small Welsh town. He is both inspired and challenged by the simplicity of his new life and the rural environment in which he has escaped to, and Griffiths tells his story without great apology or pity. There are some scathing attacks on the 12 step program but recognition also on the narrator's behalf of his own shortcomings and past f*ck-ups, and how they will change his life forever. The plot concludes amusingly but plausibly, and the writing throughout is wonderfully suited to the characters it portrays. This was the first book I've read by Niall Griffiths, and I will be seeking out more in the near future. A very enjoyable read, but you do have to get used to the dialect. It reminded me of On the Road by Jack Kerouac.
March 21, 2013
This isn't a book for everyone, but the quirky mix of literary quality and disturbingly graphic humour was right up my alley. I am without a doubt the intended audience here. I can't begin to explain how good that feels. The best I can manage is to say it's like walking into a stranger's house where all the amenities are just like yours. It feels like home, although it's still foreign. I'll definitely be hunting down more from this author.
June 1, 2022
Fun, solidly written story. Some interesting twists on typical character archetypes.
December 21, 2011
Ripped through this one after grading was finished. Niall Griffiths writes like nobody else; he's compared to Irvine Welsh, but he is never as mean-spirited as Welsh can be. Griffiths treats his characters--working-class, addicts and alcoholics, disabled, even thugs--with great compassion, even though he's edgy, and the f-bombs abound. (The f-bombs, too, make for wildly lyrical prose.)
Stump is told in alternating voices. Every other chapter is narrated by a recovering alkie/addict who lost his left arm to gangrene after a needle broke off. He's hiding out in Aberystwyth, Wales, trying to stay sober and manage his disability ("try makin yer fuckin breakfast with one arm"). As in Griffiths's Runt, this narrator maintains close affective (but never sentimental) connections to the Welsh landscape, birds, and other animals (including the rabbit he keeps, and the one-eyed fox who watches him and his rabbit). You just have to read it! Every chapter ends with a sardonic rendition of one of the 12 Steps.
The alternating chapters follow two gangsters who are driving out to teach a lesson to the one-armed man, who ran afoul of a mob boss back in his hometown Liverpool. The dialogue between these two puts Quentin Tarantino to shame, and is side-splittingly funny, even if you don't catch all the British-isms.
Just ordered a couple more Griffiths, used, off amazon. Can't wait.
Stump is told in alternating voices. Every other chapter is narrated by a recovering alkie/addict who lost his left arm to gangrene after a needle broke off. He's hiding out in Aberystwyth, Wales, trying to stay sober and manage his disability ("try makin yer fuckin breakfast with one arm"). As in Griffiths's Runt, this narrator maintains close affective (but never sentimental) connections to the Welsh landscape, birds, and other animals (including the rabbit he keeps, and the one-eyed fox who watches him and his rabbit). You just have to read it! Every chapter ends with a sardonic rendition of one of the 12 Steps.
The alternating chapters follow two gangsters who are driving out to teach a lesson to the one-armed man, who ran afoul of a mob boss back in his hometown Liverpool. The dialogue between these two puts Quentin Tarantino to shame, and is side-splittingly funny, even if you don't catch all the British-isms.
Just ordered a couple more Griffiths, used, off amazon. Can't wait.
November 23, 2011
a surprisingly gentle novel about a very fucked up dude who is adjusting to his one-armedness, small town (wales) life by the shore, and being out of the dark life, and giving up booze. but then his old life comes for a visit as two bad guys from the city, sent to mess him up. a good entre for people who are tempted yet scared of niall griffiths
November 23, 2020
3.5 stars. no spoilers but my enjoyment of this book directly correlated to the character arc of stump’s pet rabbit charlie
April 18, 2022
A clear triumph of language over substance. A one that does not annoy you at all and you end up wanting more.
January 18, 2023
The blurb on the copy of this book I have is quite different to the one on ŷ - suggesting it would be more of a thriller, cat-and-mouse type affair, which Stump really isn't. The ŷ blurb is a much better fit. This book explores alcoholism in the form of one man and his story.
The text is written in a Liverpudlian accent, which may be off-putting. I personally don't tend to go for books that get flashy with the structure of its prose like this, but you get used to it and the prose itself, which is quite beautiful at times, benefits from the the fact it reads like a Scouser telling you a story. There is a lyricism to the book and Stump is only a short read, so overall I would recommend as a quick, enjoyable flick but the story itself is not too complex or interesting.
It doesn't take itself too seriously and is largely comedic before anything else, but it has its moments - I imagine anyone who has struggled with addiction would find things to enjoy here and the protagonist is relatable in his fragility.
Deserving of the rating it has on ŷ and the 3* I have given it. Certainly don't expect to have your world view challenged here but I would recommend this book nevertheless. It got me out of a reading slump and to that purpose it is perfect.
The text is written in a Liverpudlian accent, which may be off-putting. I personally don't tend to go for books that get flashy with the structure of its prose like this, but you get used to it and the prose itself, which is quite beautiful at times, benefits from the the fact it reads like a Scouser telling you a story. There is a lyricism to the book and Stump is only a short read, so overall I would recommend as a quick, enjoyable flick but the story itself is not too complex or interesting.
It doesn't take itself too seriously and is largely comedic before anything else, but it has its moments - I imagine anyone who has struggled with addiction would find things to enjoy here and the protagonist is relatable in his fragility.
Deserving of the rating it has on ŷ and the 3* I have given it. Certainly don't expect to have your world view challenged here but I would recommend this book nevertheless. It got me out of a reading slump and to that purpose it is perfect.
February 17, 2017
Vivid writing, sad and bleakly comic by turn, this is the story of a former junkie and recovering alcoholic, whose amputated stump partially serves as a metaphor for his addiction. I didn't want to put this down until I found out whether or not he would survive the outcome of his past life catching up with him.
December 2, 2023
The accent was a bit difficult for me but I did really like the dialogue. The prose was a bit much for me and my ADHD brain haha but I did like it. Only thing I HATE is when the rabbit died, I just don’t like when an author kills off a pet, but that just me probably.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 9, 2013
Library Journal: Griffiths's characters come straight out of a British gangster film mixed with Irvine Welsh's druggy street squalor. You've got your stock knuckle-dragging heavies, your bad guy on the lam trying to go straight, and your expletive-ridden vernacular holding it all together. Our hero is hiding out in the Welsh countryside, running from a mob boss who has him pinned for revenge. As he contemplates his seedy past, two thugs drive down from Liverpool to take him out. There is eloquence amid the creative cursing—in the descriptions of the countryside and in our one-armed hero's tender ruminations on his vegetable garden and pet rabbit. But unlike Griffiths's Kelly + Victor , this novel loses steam early on, the tension as illusory as a lost limb; the author's cutting-edge style seems to have lost its cool and direction in what feels as empty an exercise as the protagonist's cynical, self-effacing commentary on AA's 12-step proclamations. Only for the reader eager to revisit the crusty loo Ewan MacGregor crawled down in Trainspotting .—MishaStone, Seattle P.L. --MishaStone (Reviewed January 15, 2005) (Library Journal, vol 130, issue 1, p95)
March 28, 2015
It was ok, the language flitted between speech and story, the speech language slowed me down, changed the rhythm of the book, took away from the story, I'm not talking about the the strong words but the writing to try and convey a dialect/accent. The story though was good and the ending I liked a lot a sliding doors moment.
September 29, 2009
Even though I felt I had to purge myself of the profane words after I finished reading it (it's over-the-top excessive), I still have to admit it was a profound read.
August 4, 2015
Ok but not as dark as other of his books. More humour but less of a plot building to a violent climax like most of his other books.!it was ok but not great
June 10, 2021
Quite the ride.
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