Agnes Owens (1926–2014)

Agnes Owen, was a great, and in my view, very underrated writer. This collection of her short stories, shows her bleak black humour at his finest. Most of her best work is in the early collections "Gentlemen of the West" - a loosely connected set of stories set in the west of Scotland on characters based on friends of her brick layer son. This is both extraordinarily depressing (Christmas Day at the Paxton) and very funny (Tolworth McGee). From her other two major collections - "Lean Times" and "People Like That" I would particularly recommend the brilliant "Bus Queue", "When Shankland Comes" and "The Collectors". Some of her later work didn't quite reach this standard and is mainly interesting for completist reasons but for the most part this is a brilliant posthumous record of an overlooked and neglected writer… (meer)

Read this as part of her Collected Stories. Wonderful funny writing. Poor working class young man, a brickie, finding it tough to find work in mid 80s Scotland. He and his mates have few skills and even less ambition. They like their drink, but that's just an integral and unavoidable part of life. He still lives at home with his Ma. They're tough people that don't want to reveal any vulnerable softness, but it leaks out. The brief scenes with his mother, usually either leaving the house or coming home, are little pregnant gems of hilarious family ties. He and his mates are often desperate for money or booze, and some of the very black scenes made me laugh out loud. Terrific.… (meer)

After reading the first story in this collection I felt like I was on the verge of discovering a wonderful new writer. Except she's not new. The first story, Arabella, was terrific: mordantly black, funny, strong punchy narrative and descriptions.
That story remained one of the strongest, but there were many others too that delighted. The wicked black streak showed up periodically, especially in the later stories.
The writing is direct and concise. The author disappears, leaving only the reader and the characters. The stories mostly are of the working poor, unemployed and unemployable, set in Scotland. Agnes Owens came from that world, and she wrote of what she knew, and she has done it brilliantly.

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