You can see how James Kelman can throw people. He’s not the first writer to spin tales of the down-and-out. These are gritty stories full of the hard-nosed and the hard-headed. But they have a deep internal quality to them. Kelman traps the reader inside the skulls of his characters. So you're st...
Gaun tae have tae gi this yin the auld heave ho an I didnae even get tae page 100 neither. Ye wantae know whut this shitpile is like? Et's like tae drive us fuckin cracked, is whut it's like. Et's jest the common nor garden shite that gaes on in this radge bastard's brain whit's a fuckin loser bu...
Passionate, exhilarating and darkly humorous, "The Burn" is an extraordinary collection of short stories by a master of paranoia and an unsurpassed prose stylist.
Tammas is 20, a loner and a compulsive gambler. Unable to hold a job for long, his life revolves around Glasgow bars, living with his sister and brother-in-law, betting shops, and casinos. Sometimes Tammas wins, more often he loses. But gambling gives him as good a chance as any of discovering wh...
One of the strangest texts I've encountered. The book is a series of reports and interviews and stories told by anonymous victims and survivors of some unnamed police state bordering on martial law. The pastiche would be odd enough, structurally, even without the book's main conceit. Which is: th...
Murdo lay in bed an extra few minutes. There was a lot to think about. But that was all, thinking; he finished the packing yesterday. Soon he was up and downstairs for breakfast. Dad had eaten his and was doing the last-minute check to electric switches and gas taps, water taps and window snibs. ...