If It Is Your Life

August 4, 2014
The latest collection from Booker Prize-winning Kelman (How Late It Was, How Late) is a scruffy volume of 19 stories, told in the author's trademark stream-of-consciousness, first-person style. Narratives zigzag throughoutâprotagonists ramble and travel the earthâyet only a handful of tales genuinely thrill. The title story, while somewhat charming, ruminates far too long on the neurosis of a college student (mostly concerning classism and sex) as he rides a bus to his hometown, and this lingering squashes any goodwill by the narrative's climax. Much better is the trifecta of "A Sour Mystery," "Man to Man," and "The Gate." In "A Sour Mystery," the adult male protagonist nervously walks with an ex-lover to a local bar. "Man to Man" finds a tavern patron ruminating on the idea of cowardice, to powerful effect. And in "The Gate," a grandfather buys a used bicycle for his grandson, only to get lost as he carries the contraption home. Men of a similar age also inhabit "The Third Man, or else the Fourth," a story wound around a group of older gents as they sit around a makeshift fire and discuss local news while waiting for a horserace. Though uneven, Kelman's collection is versatile.

Starred review from July 1, 2014
Man Booker Prize winner Kelman (Mo Said She Was Quirky, 2013) is the master chronicler of working-class Scottish life. In his fiction, the random thoughts and opinions of ordinary men and women take on an almost transcendental quality. Talking to themselves, his characters create a running dialogue as they look back on their lives or lament their current situations. They surprise us, and sometimes, undoubtedly, they surprise themselves. Some of Kelman's 19 new short stories are very short; other are quite long, including talking about my wife, a remarkable examination of the lack of communication between a husband and wife that also touches on the anger twinned with powerlessness of the ordinary worker and subsequent feelings of degradation. In the title story, a young man attending an English university returns home by bus, heading north to Glasgow, and at one point, he considers the cultural differences between Scotland and England and concludes, They were completely different down south. Other stories address such issues as language, politics, gender, and age. A masterful composer, Kelman makes writing look easy, and then infuses it with a sense of gravitas that can be, at times, breathtaking, in his own modest way.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)