*Please note, this post contains spoilers for the book*

I read There’s Only One Danny Garvey as part of The Scottish Book Club’s book for October 2022. Like many in the group, I’m not a football fan so might not have picked this book up otherwise. This would have been such a shame as it is fantastic and thought provoking read. Like the real twist and turns of a football season, I was not prepared for where it would take me over the course of the 260 pages, especially after the “67th minute” as the book twists and culminates in a horrifying and unexpected ending.

At the outset, it is a story of lost potential, a homecoming, of communities in small Scottish towns and villages and the tragedy and mystery surrounding the Reid family. Moving beyond this, it emerges that this is an exploration of trauma and psychosis and our understanding and view of the protagonist Danny shifts. As the book progresses we begin to realise that Danny is in fact an unreliable narrator. Indeed it becomes clear that the narration of the novel and the reality we inhabit as readers may not be as it seems and may in fact be shifting with Danny’s mental state at the time. As I read There’s Only One Danny Garvey, I couldn’t help but think of some parallels to Graeme Macrae Burnet’s excellent His Bloody Project mixed with Chuck Palahniuk’s cult classic Fight Club.

Having the benefit of discussing this as part of a book club, it became clear that there was a difference of opinion amongst our members on the events in the novel and what the true reality was. This also appeared to impact on people’s relationship with Danny with many finding Danny’s actions at the end of the novel difficult to sit with. These different interpretations took the novel in different directions and I think that a reread might uncover further details and help strengthen my confidence in my interpretations of the story. For the purposes of this formulation however, I will be basing this on my thoughts and interpretations from my initial read. I accept that others may have a different opinion on Danny and might not agree with my interpretation here. This is the beauty of having an unreliable narrator and a real strength of the novel – how it can evoke different reactions and interpretations from the reader.

My interpretation of Danny’s story has likely been influenced by my past experiences working in a forensic mental health setting, working primarily with individuals with experience of psychosis. I am hoping to draw from this experience for a psychological formulation of Danny Garvey. I am writing this formulation at the point in time after the dramatic events that end the novel with Danny appearing to be on the verge of purposely crashing the car at Barshaw Bridge with Damo in the passenger seat. At the conclusion of the novel, it has become clear that Danny’s mental state has severely deteriorated with what appears to be an increase in symptoms of psychosis. I am using the cognitive model of psychosis (Morrison, 2001) for this formulation. This model allows us to consider Danny’s early traumatic life experiences and how these are likely to have shaped his beliefs about himself and development of psychosis. The model also gives space to explore Danny’s experience of psychosis and how he makes sense of the visual hallucinations, delusions and paranoid thinking we glimpse during the novel.