The Good Times Book

James Kelman's first book since his 1994 Booker-winning novel, How Late It Was, How Late, is a collection of 20 soliloquies from his habitual protagonist; the Scottish working-class male. The Good Times features men drinking, men working and men simply being with other men. That is not to say women are totally absent. In fact women are often the motivating force for these stories, but they are only glimpsed through the dreams, expectations and, most of all, the anxieties of the men. "She was bending down to look inside one of her bags and her head bumped the edge of the table", recounts the ham-fisted romantic narrator of "Oh my darling". "I moved my hand towards her but she drew me one hell of a look. It's not gony happen again, she said, that's for bloody sure, just no way. And remember this, it was you who asked me to come, it was nay me dragged ye." To anyone who has read Kelman's previous work the relentless swearing will come as no surprise, but it is the accuracy and power of his prose that really draws the reader up short with its telling incisiveness into the troubled lives of his characters. This impressive collection is a bleak, wry and occasionally humorous insight into the quiet agonies of everyday life. --Nick WroeRead More