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Title: How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman ISBN: 0-385-31560-0 Publisher: Delta Pub. Date: 01 February, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.75 (24 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: blow-your-mind-beautiful-prose
Comment: 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: It's not too late to read a great book
Comment: "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.
Rating: 5
Summary: A gripping, personal exploration of anguish
Comment: 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.
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Title: Last Orders by Graham Swift ISBN: 0679766626 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 14 January, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle ISBN: 0140233903 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Blind Assassin : A Novel by Margaret Atwood ISBN: 0385720955 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 28 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Ghost Road by Pat Barker ISBN: 0452276721 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: November, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Sacred Hunger (Norton Paperback Fiction) by Barry Unsworth ISBN: 0393311147 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: November, 1993 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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