The Burn

by James Kelman

Passionate, exhilarating and darkly humorous, "The Burn" is an extraordinary collection of short stories by a master of paranoia and an unsurpassed prose stylist.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Scotland

243 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Kelman says:

My own background is as normal or abnormal as anyone else's. Born and bred in Govan and Drumchapel, inner city tenement to the housing scheme homeland on the outer reaches of the city. Four brothers, my mother a full time parent, my father in the picture framemaking and gilding trade, trying to operate a one man business and I left school at 15 etc. etc. (...) For one reason or another, by the age of 21/22 I decided to write stories. The stories I wanted to write would derive from my own background, my own socio-cultural experience. I wanted to write as one of my own people, I wanted to write and remain a member of my own community.

During the 1970s he published a first collection of short stories. He became involved in Philip Hobsbaum's creative writing group in Glasgow along with Tom Leonard, Alasdair Gray and Liz Lochhead, and his short stories began to appear in magazines. These stories introduced a distinctive style, expressing first person internal monologues in a pared-down prose utilising Glaswegian speech patterns, though avoiding for the most part the quasi-phonetic rendition of Tom Leonard. Kelman's developing style has been influential on the succeeding generation of Scottish novelists, including Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner and Janice Galloway. In 1998, Kelman received the Stakis Prize for "Scottish Writer of the Year" for his collection of short stories 'The Good Times.'
http://www.contemporarywriters.com/au...

Reviews

[Sean Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Up there with Kafka, Beckett, Joyce and Miller. Short story perfection. There are few writers around like James Kelman. The final story, of which the short story collection is named after, moved me to tears.

[Goele Lousbergh · Rating 4 out of 5]

"But lassies are trained for it, in a manner of speaking; it's part of the growing-up process for them, young females. It doesn't happen with boys, just if you're a lassie, you've got to learn how not to talk; plus how not to look, you get trained how not to look. How not to look and how not to talk. You get trained how not to do things."

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Kelman is a great writer, I loved the stories in this book, but his writing is not for me - which is my loss not a criticism. To be honest it his use of the Scottish or Glaswegian slang or vernacular that did me in; I am embarrassed to admit this - I loved Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart - and I do not want to stop anyone from reading Kelman's books, particularly any new readers. I suppose with all there is to read, and all that I certainly want to read, one has to make choices - and much as I hate to admit it Kelman is a writer I will always admire but I am not going to read.

[Ade Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this marvellous collection again. From the flimsiest detail, Kelman can reveal the most intense levels of being human. Sometimes he does it in just one page.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

In an alternate universe, The Burn has more than eight reviews and 137 ratings on Goodreads, and Kelman is correctly recognised as one of the most powerful and talented contemporary writers in existence, punching up there with Beckett et al. In the present universe, Kelman’s work is largely championed in Scotland (not loudly or persistently enough) and elsewhere continually confronts the non-Scottish reader’s impatience when encountering fairly straightforward Glaswegian dialect in their prose. In this seminal story collection, Kelman continues scouring the interiors of tortured protagonists in humdrum settings, such as the Catholic guilt of the adulterer in ‘A situation’, the awkward pub blether of ‘Lassies are trained that way’, or the depressingly accurate misfire of old friends in ‘Events in yer life’. The more exploratory side of Kelman is captured in Greyhound for Breakfast, where more surreal microfictions with an overt late-Beckett influence can be discovered, while in The Burn Kelman’s skill for capturing snapshots of the mind’s restless jibber-jabber across offensively ordinary lives is alive in all its exquisite nuance, humour, and warmth.

[Cathy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not my cuppa.
Read, barely, two of the many tales, snippets, stream of consciousness bits in this collection. Crass, gritty, raw. I can see the point of, but...
Too much like James Joyce for me. Classic or not, still not my thing.
In his own time and place, Kelman may well be a genius. But a genius I can live being none the richer for.

[Frank Farrell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ok if you like reading about men siting in a pub and being miserable, I suppose.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apart from possibly Agnes Owen, Kelman's short stories are the best around