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3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
A unique narrative voice hooked me on this book, but the lack of a plot carrying the story forward bogged it down. I ended up skipping quite a few pages to see where the story ended.
I'm glad I met Sammy and heard his unique voice -- I just wish this had been a novella instead of nearly 400 pages.
I'm glad I met Sammy and heard his unique voice -- I just wish this had been a novella instead of nearly 400 pages.
Arghh, I've mixed feelings about this book. I started it a fair while ago flying back to the UK and it's really not an airplane book. I put it aside for a while, read a bunch of other books and then tried finishing it before the year ended. No such luck.
Sammy (as the blurb says) has had a bad week. That much is true. A lost drunken weekend, possible mugging, definite assult and sudden blindness. We meander through a short period of his life in a repetitive stream of consciousness that is intensely difficult to read at times, whip fast at others and almost always exhausting. I felt physically out of breath and tachycardic after racing through the final 100 pages in a grand effort to put it on my shelf and not worry about it any more. The scottish dialect it's written in is reminiscent of Trainspotting but this is a very different book.
The story as such doesn't really go anywhere. It's more about the journey and Sammy is an interesting conductor. Often funny, trying at times.
Truthfully I didn't really like this and probably wouldn't read it again. Winner of the Booker prize 1994.
Sammy (as the blurb says) has had a bad week. That much is true. A lost drunken weekend, possible mugging, definite assult and sudden blindness. We meander through a short period of his life in a repetitive stream of consciousness that is intensely difficult to read at times, whip fast at others and almost always exhausting. I felt physically out of breath and tachycardic after racing through the final 100 pages in a grand effort to put it on my shelf and not worry about it any more. The scottish dialect it's written in is reminiscent of Trainspotting but this is a very different book.
The story as such doesn't really go anywhere. It's more about the journey and Sammy is an interesting conductor. Often funny, trying at times.
Truthfully I didn't really like this and probably wouldn't read it again. Winner of the Booker prize 1994.
claustrophobic and genius and confusing and very scottish. i’ve never read a book with so many variations on the word ‘fuck’
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Fascinating, trippy, fantastic walk inside a man's mind--I haven't yet decided if he's completely insane or not. So interesting and I love the Scottish dialect (nay that I get it all meself).
James Kelman's novel "How Late It Was, How Late" won the Booker Prize, but I'm not really sure why. The stream-of-consciousness story goes on and on but there is no real payoff in the end and lots of loose ends that never get tied up.
The story is told in stream-of-consciousness style, following our narrator Sammy who goes on a two-day drinking binge, inexplicably wakes up and picks a fight with police, who beat him and cause him to go blind.
The novel is written in Glasgow vernacular, but the language didn't come across to me when reading it. (As opposed to Trainspotting, which was just so good at putting Scottish voices in my head.)
I wasn't impressed with the story itself or the language.
The story is told in stream-of-consciousness style, following our narrator Sammy who goes on a two-day drinking binge, inexplicably wakes up and picks a fight with police, who beat him and cause him to go blind.
The novel is written in Glasgow vernacular, but the language didn't come across to me when reading it. (As opposed to Trainspotting, which was just so good at putting Scottish voices in my head.)
I wasn't impressed with the story itself or the language.
challenging
dark
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
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.
I don't have the energy to read this book. Ten pages in I was mentally exhausted. The combination of stream-of-consciousness style storytelling, a written accent and a drunken, blind first-person point of view makes it inaccessible.
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Strong Scottish dialect. Written without a lot of punctuation.