Bucket of Tongues by Duncan McLean

by Duncan McLean

Winner of the 1993 Somerset Maugham Award, this first collection of short stories reveals Scotland's seamier drinking with the soccer casuals in the old stone circle; stumbling bloody-footed along the cliff-top path at midnight; lost in a liver'n'onions-fuelled fantasy of sex and violence.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Duncan McLean (b. 1964) is a Scottish novelist, short story writer, playwright, and editor. His debut, Bucket of Tongues won a Somerset Maugham Award in 1993.

McLean has lived in Orkney since 1992. While based in Edinburgh in the 1980s, he started writing songs, stand-up routines, and plays for the Merry Mac Fun Co, a street theatre and comedy act with agitprop tendencies. The Merry Macs won various awards, and were twice nominated for the Perrier Comedy Award.

In the 1990s, McLean was part of a loose grouping of writers centred on Edinburgh whose characters were mainly poor, working class and young, whose themes were drugs, drink, dance music, violence, and alienation, and who took their inspiration variously from the Glaswegian writers of the previous generation, notably James Kelman, and from overseas writers like Richard Brautigan and Knut Hamsun.

In December 1990, with the writer James Meek, McLean set up and ran the Clocktower Press, a small but influential publishing house, which helped bring a new generation of Scottish writers to wider attention. McLean, Meek and the artist Eddie Farrell invested £50 each to print the first booklet, Safe/Lurch, with both writers contributing a story and Farrell illustrating the cover. After the first three booklets, Meek moved to Kiev and McLean went on to publish seven more, including the first separately-published extracts of what would later become Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting. The fifth of the Clocktower series, it was printed in April 1992 in an edition of 300 under the title Past Tense: four stories from a novel.

In 1992, McLean published his first book, a collection of short stories called Bucket of Tongues, and since then has published several more books, including the acclaimed coming-of-age novel Blackden and a collection of plays, entitled Plays:One. In 1995, he published the novel Bunker Man and in 1998 his travelogue Lone Star Swing was published, which saw McLean tracing the roots of country music precursor Bob Wills.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't remember much about this book. I'm writing this to satisfy Jasmine's request for what I thought about the book. I remember thinking that it would be a really cool book, and maybe there was even some kind of blurb or something at St. Mark Books praising the book, or maybe I just wanted to read a collection of short stories that had a person licking someone else's face on the cover. Or maybe it was because the guy is Scottish and I'd had good experiences with Scotts before. I don't know. I remember the book not living up to my expectations. If I wanted to I could use Bucket of Tongues to be a phrase I'd use to express disappointment in something that I thought would be cool. Like, "When I think about it New York City is a really just a Bucket of Tongues". Or, "My entire life is either a sick joke, or maybe just a Bucket of Tongues".
So yeah, that's what I remember about the book.

[Ron Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is good for what it is. If you don't like reading foul language or about people with multiple issues - mostly unresolved, I would not recommend reading these stories. I enjoyed the stories at first but then found the characters somewhat redundant.

[Sandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a book to read while eating lunch! Nor for those who object to copious amounts of c**ts and f**king (I don't, where necessary) . Contemporaneous with Trainspotting (which I have not read), well-written and -observed of folks behaviour but not exactly enjoyable for much of the time, although I got a lot of pleasure from 'Bed of Thistles'.

[Martin Raybould · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some nasty stories and harsh truths from the underbelly of urban Scotland. This is a riveting collection with 'Hours of Darkness', the longest piece, being the most haunting.

[Stephen]

TBC

[Camila]

hilarious prose; hilarious, raunchy yet tender. really enjoyed

[Eh?Eh! · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well. Huh. Short stories that have great "eye dialect" by this Scottish author. Who coined that phrase, Sparrow? The accent is conveyed really well, like you can hear it in the mind as you read. But I didn't like most of them. Those that worked for me were great, funny and full of cussing and the grit of life. The rest felt odd, unfinished or pointless. With a short story, with any book actually, I look for a storyline, for something to happen or unfold or splat or be explained. I'm a simple reader. Take me somewhere. Show me something. Anything. A lot of these seemed blobby on the ends, or like there needed to be a lot more words to finish. Or maybe I didn't like how neutral or down they left me at the end. Err, so it could be the season or my mood that didn't receive this as well as it could've been. The accent stuff and idioms and that one bit of Cockney I caught were fun, though.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not your traditional stories in this collection. The majority of the stories are what used to be called slice-of-life stories. The slice of life they give is of Scots on the edge. Many of these stories remind me of people I knew or saw when I lived in Scotland. McLean captures the inebriated Scottish consciousness perfectly. And his mastery of the Scots spoken language is unmatched. Makes Irvine Welsh look like a piker. Welsh sounds accurate until you read McLean. This is how I remember people talking and thinking. Great read, but none of the stories really knocked me out. In some measure, the dialect gets in the way, might obscure the stories. It’s dead on realism, however.

[Jasmine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this book. This book is not memorable. I mean this is a bit complicated really. The book isn't really about anything. I could tell you the idea of maybe 3 of the stories, but I really enjoyed reading the stories. On the other hand I cannot for the life of me tell you what "ken" is suppose to mean.

I think this is not a book that anyone would like, but it is certainly an interesting book.

[Jennifer Sciolino-Moore · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book of short stories circling around blue collar life in Scotland. There isn't much here that stood out to me. Each piece was a snippet; day-in-the-life stuff. Polaroid shots of alcoholics and hooligans, hangers-on and deadbeats on the dole. A solid, meh.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

stories of life on the edge - this being Scotland it's drink, drugs and football all the way,and a sweary dialect drives the fiction. I'm sure I read this in the 80s, but this edition is 99...

[Keith · Rating 2 out of 5]

No idea why this won awards.

[Kevin Tole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb first book from the man from the Orkneys