A compelling, raw narrative that I often had to read in small chunks given how brutal it felt. Kelman's technical prowess is impressive and I found myself thinking just as much about his form, style, and his writing strategies as I did the story itself. Worth reading just for that, I would say. ( )

Why I read this book. This is one of the 1001 Books you must read before you die and the BOTM for Reading 1001 over on GR. I was able to obtain a copy from ILL.
This is a story of a few days in the life of an ex-convict, alcoholic man. On a bender over the weekend, Sammy wakes up, gets beat up by law enforcement, realizes he is blind and is under suspicion by the legal authorities because of a possible contact with a man of interest to the law enforcement. The story is stream of consciousness told in Glaswegian dialect with excessive amounts of vulgarities.
Sammy is newly blind, he is without any help that he can trust until his son shows up towards the end. And at that point, Sammy takes on role of father and tells his son a story that downplays the troubles. Sammy's goal has now become to escape,to get away from the system, law enforcement, etc. He wants this so bad that he leaves a shelter, his belongings, and takes what little money he can get his hands off and "...then the door slammed shut and that was him, out of sight." ( )

I'm a reading all the Booker Prize winners this year in the 50th anniversary of the prize. Follow me at www.methodtohermadness.com.

I am really not sure what I just read. This book was a very controversial pick for the Booker Prize. Some objected to its vulgarity, but that’s not what bothered me.

How Late It Was is the stream-of-consciousness story of a few days in the life of Sammy Samuels, petty criminal. He awakes from a bender after a fight with his girlfriend and decides first thing to pick a fight with some undercover cops. They beat him up and throw him in jail, where he wakes up blind.

So I read on, expecting to find out something, anything. Why has Sammy gone blind? Where has his girlfriend gone? What happened during the day he blacked out? Why are the police after him?

No answers are forthcoming. Sammy’s monologue is generally engaging and insightful at times, but nearly four hundred pages of Scottish dialect spoken by an anxiety-prone drunk is a wee bit much, nay? It may be more accessible than James Joyce, but not any more satisfying.
( )

This novel was a unique reading experience. First, there was the language. Warning: if the use of the f-word, in all of its glorious forms, many, many, many times or even the use of any word that many times bothers you or bores you, you should probably not read this book. Then there is the Glaswegian vernacular, which was a challenge initially but easily overcome. I found Urban Dictionary solved most of this problem for me. Once you have committed the most common words and their meaning to memory, the language actually flows very smoothly.

But what amazed me was how Kelman has written from the perspective of a character who has gone suddenly blind, and you spend much of the novel inside Sammy's head as he comes to understand and deal with his blindness. For me as a reader, this was both enlightening and depressing, thus only the three stars, because I had at times to push myself forward as I read the novel. I really enjoyed, though, two of the characters, Ally the rep and Peter, Sammy's son; they made the second half of the novel read more quickly.

I am not one to steer away from downtrodden characters or characters facing incredibly challenging obstacles or odds. Nelson Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm and several of Joan Didion's novels come to mind, but this one was more difficult for me. With all of its complexities and craft aside, I ultimately found this novel to be about trust or the inability to trust. How trust opens doors and the inability to trust closes doors. Have you ever wanted to whisper in someone's ear, "Just walk through the door. It is right there in front of you." But they can't see it. For them, that door is closed. ( )

On to an old Booker prizewinner now, way back from 1994. This is possibly one of my favourite titles for a book for a long time. You just know it's going to be a great read.

How Late It Was, How Late is written in thick working-class Glaswegian vernacular, narrated by the protagonist Sammy in a stream of consciousness style. One page in and I thought I was going to hate it. The combination of keeping up with Sammy's inner dialogue and staying tuned in to the slang required close reading to begin with, but after a while you get used to it, with the local patter developing him into the most fantastically vivid character.

The book opens with Sammy waking up in someone else's too-small trainers after a two day bender. He doesn't know where he is, he doesn't know where his good shoes have gone to, and he's completely lost a day. Things get steadily worse, setting off a bizarre chain of events that we walk through with him for the rest of the novel.

To the outside world Sammy is a no-good drinker and troublemaker who's been in and out of prison a couple of times and isn't to be trusted. As readers, though, despite his nonsense we quickly fall for him as a brilliant anti-hero, a loveable rogue with a good heart who wants to change his lot but who just can't help himself. This time he's really landed in it, but Sammy being Sammy he just batters on, trying to find his way to the end of the rainbow.

Full of black comedy, this is a funny, brilliant and authentic novel. Given the vernacular, the prose is heavy on the swearing from start to finish so it may not be to everyone's taste. Without it, though, Sammy simply would not ring true as a character, and I had to laugh on many an occasion at his swearing creativity.

5 stars - naw, but I'm no jokin ye man, ye couldnay read this to the end and no end up lovin it. Nay point being fucking daft, now - ye get me? ( )