How Late It Was, How Late

This is one of my favorite books of all time but let me warn you it is a mess to read and if you are easily offended this is not the book for you. Full of swear words and written in dialect (which makes it very hard to read) this one is an acquired taste. If you have just finished reading Trainspotting (the only good book by Irvine Welsh & not the greatest movie) which has a glossary of terms it is a little easier. Winner of the Booker Prize because it is pure genus and a one-of-a-kind read. Completely original, written well before Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting and much, much better.

It's a shame no one seemed to notice this book in America despite its Booker Prize. Kelman's low-to-the-ground style really conveys the despair of the main character, Sammy. This book has a haunting quality about it that's reminiscent of Camus' The Stranger, yet it is a much more confused, frenzied, quickening spiral toward oblivion.

"No frigate like a book to take us lands away," said Emily Dickinson. Oh my, she's right. There are other worlds out there, lots of them. Kelman's book takes us to one, a unique one, right in the middle of Glasgow, in fact in the outer limits of consciousness somewhere - in the mind of a low-life petty thief named Sammy who stupidly assaulted two policemen and got beaten so badly by them that he is blinded. After that, everything in this book is generated, more or less, in Sammy's head as interior monologue (not stream of consciousness as others say) or by the speech of the characters Sammy deals with. Those characters do plenty of talking with an extremely limited vocabulary that nevertheless has an amazing expressive range proving, again, that Scotland is a nation of talkers, great talkers. It is also a welfare state with lots of red tape and institutionalized dullness. So much so that Sammy's difficulties with the DSS Central Medical board and with the DSS in general call into question the Scottish I.Q. and raise the query that they might have there some institutional madness as serious as that discussed in Bleak House. Some advice: Donay be turned off by ye Scottish dialect. Read the first three pages aloud. Aw fine. Aye, they make sense. Ah stories, man, stories, life's full of stories, there to help ye out. Aye right pal okay.

I bought this book as a remaindered item on the strength of it's Booker prize years ago, knowing nothing of the author. This book is a breathtaking insight into the workings of a minor criminal mind over a short, tragic span of time. The style, 'stream of consciousness' I guess would be fairly apt, has been done to death but seldom with the power and authenticity one finds here. Authenticity is the key word, I think, the text painfully believable without a single false note, a remarkable achievement in itself. The self-destructiveness characteristic of this type of mind, the unfailing series of wrong decisions with their painful, infuriating consequences rings so true as to make one wonder how the author turned the trick. The style and message is strongly influenced by Beckett which should not put one off. Highly readable, coarse, coarse, coarse, but how could it be otherwise?

This book is like getting your first stereo. At first you might not know how to hook it up, but once you figure it out it's sheer heaven. Not since The Butcher Boy have I been carried through a text by the sheer beauty of the words juxtaposed against such intestine-tightening despair. Sure, the dialect can be tricky to grasp. But don't the greatest pleasures in life take some training. And admitedly there's a way in which "nothing happens." But really, who cares (And actually a lot DOES happen). This is one of the most beautifully panic-producing novels I've ever touched. For the first half of the book I could only read 10 pages at a time because it made me so nervous. But once I hit around page two hundred I finished it in one sitting. People who don't get this book are the same ones who think Saving Private Ryan is how a movie should be. There has to be action, action, action and some soppy something or other to hang your heart on. Well, pick up this book and hang your heart on poor old Sammy. He's a heartbreaker extraordinaire, if I ever met one.