Customer Reviews

Busted Scotch: Selected Stories

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Kelman's collection of short stories is a bleak affair, a series of grim portraits of disaffected Scots who bumble through their Kafkaesque lives. Stories begin in the middle of a narrative, and end before any concrete resolution. Enigmatic dwarves invade a migrant workers' camp and pub, with bizarre effects. Absurdity coexists with anxiety, dispair with some aching longing for better times, when the true reason things are so bad remains firmly out of grasp. Out of this darkness emerge Kelman's characters, pitiful souls who aimlessly seek some meaning and reason. Of course, it eludes them completely. Yet, like a 100 to 1 shot against picking a winning horse, Kelman's characters continue to struggle against poverty, injustice, and hard times. In spite of this, all is not completely grim, for rays of humor pierce through the darkness, and mirth creeps into the angst, ever so subtly. In the careful portrayal of their struggles, Kelman has crafted brilliant fiction. Read one story and wince, catch your breath, gain some enlightenment, then plunge on to the next one. Each and every tale is well worth your time.

A wide range of stories of life in the slow lane of post industrial Scotland. I picked up this book in a store, tried to read it and pretty much immediately put it down for six months. I was put off by the written Scots dialect (in some (not all) of the stories), the seeming inconsequentality of some of the storylines, and the surreal nature of some others.

I'm glad I picked it up again. I tried reading "Nice to be Nice" (written in Scots) oot loud to mysel' an' it made a lot more sense, and became an affecting story of a man working (in a small way) against bureaucracy. Reading other stories it became clear that they ARE about everyday life, but they add a poetic quality to it, and really get you inside the head of the characters.

I would recommend this book.

Flashes of genius but not always readable. Short stories that sometimes lapse into incoherent surrealistic stream of consciousness. The understandability is often further reduced by phonetic spelling of dialect. The phonetic spelling assumes that the reader normally speaks Southern British English (for example "game" spelled "gemm.") At times it is absolutely brilliant with dark humor describing the way the shiftless (often homeless and destitute) make ends meet by welfare and panhandling. Reminded me often of James Joyce, which is not altogether a compliment because I've never managed to finish Ulysses.

This is about as good a way to get to know Kelman's writings as any, since he's selected the 35 short stories in this volume from four or five of his previous collections. They range from a half-page to thirty pages or so, and tend to be rather unexciting interior monologues. There are a few nice stories, my favorite being "Remember Young Cecil," about a former pool champion. Nothing much to inspire one to seek out his other work, though.