How Late It Was, How Late

"Ye wake in a corner and stay there hoping yer body will disappear, the thoughts smothering ye; these thoughts; but ye want to remember and face up to things, just something keeps ye from doing it, why can ye no do it; the words filling yer head: then the other words; there's something wrong; there's something far far wrong; ye're no a good man, ye're just no a good man." From the moment Sammy wakes slumped in a park corner, stiff and sore after a two-day drinking binge and wearing another man's shoes, James Kelman's Booker Prize-winning novel How Late it Was, How Late loosens a torrent of furious stream-of-consciousness prose that never lets up. Beaten savagely by Glasgow police, the shoplifting ex-con Sammy is hauled off to jail, where he wakes to a world gone black. For the rest of the novel he stumbles around the rainy streets of Glasgow, brandishing a sawed-off mop handle and trying in vain to make sense of the nightmare his life has become. Sammy's girlfriend disappears; the police question him for a crime they won't name; the doctor refuses to admit that he's blind; and his attempts to get disability compensation founder in Kafkaesque red tape. Gritty, profane, darkly comic and steeped in both American country music and working-class Scottish vernacular, Sammy's is a voice the reader won't soon forget. --Mary Park

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How late it was, how late - Rated
This book is completely brilliant. It is a tour de force; an uncompromising and relentless exploration of the psyche of a particular type of marginalised person. It may be, I suppose, that you need to have had some considerable contact with hard-man disaffected indiduals for whom the world does not, and has never, worked, to realise how good this book is. I was totally captivated by the exporation of a particluar type of psyche, where the same maladaptive thought processes occur time after time after time despite their failure to achieve anything in other than terms of a personal logic/ethic. At one time I recommended it as a student text in psychology. If you drive an Audi (or even a Volvo),are in favour of goodness and against sin, you may not like it. I found it totally compelling and unlike some other reviewers, I couldn't put it down.

Eminently putdownable - Rated
Because my review is so negative I should stress that I very rarely like literary prizewinners' efforts and was unable to get past the first two pages of that other critically accaimed Scottish book "Train spotting". Having a mind to read, and given the choice between Mr Kelman's efforts and the telephone directory, I would be through to Zuckerman before turning to "How Late". If you don't like having to tackle dialogue written in an attempt to capture regional dialects and are uninterested in the alcohol intake of Glaswegians or their view of golf, and if you have already heard "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" and "Loving Her was Easier" etc. You might be tempted to pass on this little gem. In fairness, it should be said that I have not read the book from cover to cover due to chronic inability. My usual technique when I find a book hard to start (dip into the middle at various points and test the water, working backwards and sometimes going on to read the entire book both backwards and forwards) failed completely here so I fully accept that my review is biased and unfair and that I am a literary dullard. And now I must face the prospect of Amazon's clever CRM system reminding me every time this author has another shot, because of course they know full well that I have already made a purchase, but the system is insufficiently sophisticated to know how much I subsequently regretted it.

Very intense - Rated

I have previously read two Kelmans - You Have to Be Careful in the Land of the Free, and A Disaffection. From these two, I understood Kelman to be a master of the interior monologue of mundane/seedy characters. In YHTBC, it was a Scots alcoholoc in the USA, looking to return home. In Disaffection, it was a pretty hopeless teacher failing to hit it off with a pretty work colleague. I thought YHTBC was a masterpiece, but A Disaffection left me rather cold. The thing is, with these monologues, that you have to actually care about the character and his life - there's no plot or action worth speaking of, just a question of how the chaarcter got to the present situation and how they feel about it. The action is at best incidental.

In How Late It Was, How Late, the central character, Sammy (Mr Samuels) is a natural victim. He is afraid of authority and is hopelessly fatalistic. He wakes up after a bender, in the street, wearing rubbish trainers instead of his good shoes. He sees some policemen and picks a fight with them. He is arrested, beaten up and loses his sight. The monologue then sets out to explore how he came to be in that situation - apparently he is an ex-prisoner who has had a big row with his girlfriend; he also has an ex-wife and son; he has a reasonable set of friends; and a benefit dependency.

HLIWHL also explores how Sammy reacts to his sight loss. He initially curses his luck, but is fatalistically accepting, as he tries to find his way home from the police station. He has to decide how to become mobile and to feed himself. He is worried about losing his benefits (no longer available for work) so he sets off to the Broo. Sammy's natural instinct when dealing with authority is either to say nothing or to lie. This he does with aplomb, even though he might have been better served by telling the truth. He cannot explain how he lost his sight without mentioning the police, but he doesn't want to take on the police in a battle for compensation.

One is left in admiration for Sammy's resourcefulness as he tries to avoid seeking help from others. This adds to Sammy's complexity - that he would willingly accept the broo, but won't accept the help of an individual. But gradually, Sammy comes to see that he has to accept help and you can feel his pride ebbing into the pavement as he does.

Sammy brings misfortune on himself - and he knows this to be true - but without ever being malicious. He is just weak. His stoicism as he bears his punishments is remarkable, even though they seem to be out of all proportion to the original offence. To an extent this might be through cultivating a state of denial, but there is also a very practical attitude of dealing with the future rather than worrying about the past.

The text is very intense, and although it is possible to gallop through pages in short bursts, I found the need to escape frequently. The result is that I spent quite a while travelling along with Sammy. I feel I have grown from the experience.

Thinking hard.... - Rated
How Late it was, How Late is a novel which is not constrained by any laws or artistic movements. Its use of the stream of consciousness style is a million miles from Mrs. Dalloway or The Crying of Lot 49 (modernist and post-modernist, check) and actually manages to represent the Glasgow ned in a caring, respectful way.

The most exciting fact about the novel is that its rambling style splits opinion down the middle.

My verdict is that its the Marmite of modern Scottish literature: spread it on thick, I love it!

A scottish booker winner - Rated
This book has been slandered greatly, both by friends of mine and by "professional" critics. You must ignore them all. This book is utterly beautiful. Kelman takes the mind of a man and turns it into the printed word. You can't ask for much more than that.
In a few words: Virginia Woolf being dragged through a gutter by her hair.