Mo Said She Was Quirky

May 13, 2013
A daylong glimpse into the life of a London blackjack croupier, Kelman's latest novel slides easily between scene and free indirect rumination, combining ambitious psychological breadth with the necessary authorial restraint to fully inhabit the mind of Helen. Her musings are first triggered during an early-morning taxi ride when she sees a man who resembles her long-missing brother, Brian. Kelman's streaming prose depicts a typical day for Helenâher anxious thoughts about raising a six-year-old daughter Sophie, or the joys and complications of living with Mo, her Pakistani boyfriendâreflections inspired by idle moments spent gazing at old pictures, riding to work, or waiting for her clothes to dry. It is sometimes a frenetic place to be, as Kelman often shuns punctuation in favor of velocity. Helen tortures herself with unresolved memories, trying to reconcile a past that, with the death of her father and absence of her brother, can never be settled. Often, her cadence runs on like a mantra as she attempts to convince herself: "It happens in families; girl father, boy mother, it is so natural, a natural division, her and Dad, him and Mum; that is it, it is natural..." In the fleeting scenes that actively involve other characters, Kelman (How Late It Was, How Late) also knows how to draw back to near-omniscience, allowing Helen to observe along with the reader. Although sometimes labored, her deft observations are worth a close study. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency.

March 1, 2013
A bracing stream-of-consciousness tale of life on London's lower rungs from the veteran Scottish novelist and Booker Prize winner. Virginia Woolf's and James Joyce's studies of characters' inner ramblings are a Modernist artifact for plenty of writers and readers today. But for Kelman, they remain a useful way to explore the depths of people often considered outsiders. His Booker-winning 1994 novel, How Late it Was, How Late, tunneled deep into the mind of a Scottish ex-convict, and his most recent novel, the 2008 Kieron Smith, Boy, did much the same for a pre-adolescent child. The hero of this novel is Helen, a working-class Scottish woman struggling to keep her family (and herself) together in London. On her way home from work at a casino, she sees a homeless man who resembles her estranged brother, and from there, a universe of concerns emerge: Her broken relationship with her brother and parents, her difficult 6-year-old daughter, the racism that her Muslim partner (the Mo of the title) faces and how that racism affects her. Plotwise, little happens in this day-in-the-life story: She comes home from work, spends time with Mo and her daughter, tries to sleep, then heads to work again. That simplicity, combined with the generally glancing observations Helen makes about her life, makes this novel a less substantial portrait than it could have been; Kelman eschews false drama, but in favor of a dry cinema verite. Still, Helen's voice is casual, funny, earnest and a pleasure to spend time with, and in time, Kelman carefully builds her wealth of concerns into an intense can't-take-it-anymore fury. Her fear of slipping off that last rung is real. Though it lacks much of an arc, the novel's brevity and lack of affect are to its credit: a gritty and wise snapshot of urban life.

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April 1, 2013
It isn't often that a working woman from Glasgow is the lead character in a novel, yet that is who Booker Prize winner Kelman has chosen as his protagonist. Helen is an ordinary woman now working in a casino and living in London with her six-year-old daughter, Sophie (the only Scot in her class), and her Asian boyfriend. It's a bone-weary existence, the implications of which are universal. A chance sighting of someone who may or may not be Helen's estranged brother forms the foundation of the novel's structure. Her story is made special by how we are privy to her thoughts: Why do people have to hurt each other? Why did they not accept things, and accept each other? By entering the mind of his character, Kelman creates a complex and compelling portrait of someone who would otherwise be invisible. One of the most compassionate of contemporary authors, Kelman also addresses such difficult issues as sexism, racism, and poverty while gradually unveiling Helen's rich, secret emotional life. It is a marvelous achievement, restrained and deeply moving.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)