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If it is Your Life
A collection of short stories by the Booker Prize-winning Scottish master
Giving voice to the dispossessed and crafting stories of lives held in the balance, James Kelman reaches us all. Penetrating deeply into the hearts, minds, and desperation of characters who find themselves in everyday situations—in the hospital, at a bus stop, in a living room with the endless roar of the vacuum cleaner and a distant wife—Kelman follows their streams of consciousness and brings their worries to life. With honesty and dark humor, he confronts the issues of language, class, politics, gender, and age—identity in all its forms.
Giving voice to the dispossessed and crafting stories of lives held in the balance, James Kelman reaches us all. Penetrating deeply into the hearts, minds, and desperation of characters who find themselves in everyday situations—in the hospital, at a bus stop, in a living room with the endless roar of the vacuum cleaner and a distant wife—Kelman follows their streams of consciousness and brings their worries to life. With honesty and dark humor, he confronts the issues of language, class, politics, gender, and age—identity in all its forms.
256 pages, Paperback
First published March 16, 2010
7 people are currently reading
335 people want to read
About the author
James Kelman
80 books270 followersKelman 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...
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...
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
June 21, 2023
These are very fine stories—scabrously funny and wonderfully surreal tales narrated by Kelman’s stock-in-trade narrators: ageing men who are politically savvy, cynical, and permanently in the huff about being Scottish. On a par with the vintage collections The Burn and Greyhound for Breakfast.
November 7, 2011
fucking brilliant, Kelman on top form. More later..
I knew I was going to enjoy this when I read the first sentence:
When I presented myself at the Emergency section of the Social security Office I knew things could go wrong but I was not expecting a leg amputated. The protagonist then has the wrong leg of his trousers cut off and has to wear them back to front. That kind of hard Beckettian absurd humour is there throughout this book, in the ‘tramps’ who discuss the best way to start a fire, or the man who has to awkwardly carry a bike and open a gate at the same time. Kelman’s heroes are as usual Glaswegian working class men struggling with drink problems, the violence of others, bureaucracy or the burden of erotic desire. Very male – you hear in most stories that women are different, and many of the stories appear to be attempts to understand their (it is as if they are a different species) motivations: eg the naive student’s thoughts as he makes his way home to Glasgow on a coach from an English university where everybody – it becomes apparent – is rich (relatively), including his ‘girlfriend’ who may be using him as her ‘bit of rough’, and then there’s the man trying to persuade his ex to stop seeing a married man, and the husband who comes home early from his shift, and may have been sacked, but doesn't want to alarm his wife. Nearly all the pieces are ‘streams of consciousness’ mingled with dialogue and have no plot, the method is you sit inside the man’s head for a bit then it ends. Sounds uninviting maybe, and he won’t appeal to everyone, but the writing is marvellous: sweeping, accurate, albeit repetitive and sometimes - deliberately - awkward. I'd like to quote more but had to take my book back to the library.
There is a definite 80s/90s feel to the writing and concerns even though there is mention of mobile phones and social networking, another thing that may put people off. But along with the humour and political rant there is a great tenderness in these pieces, along with unending questions and philosophical debate, a search for understanding and a warmth that people don’t necessarily associate with Kelman (I think it has always been there). Above all it is funny, sweary, absurd, provoking. Lovely stuff.
I knew I was going to enjoy this when I read the first sentence:
When I presented myself at the Emergency section of the Social security Office I knew things could go wrong but I was not expecting a leg amputated. The protagonist then has the wrong leg of his trousers cut off and has to wear them back to front. That kind of hard Beckettian absurd humour is there throughout this book, in the ‘tramps’ who discuss the best way to start a fire, or the man who has to awkwardly carry a bike and open a gate at the same time. Kelman’s heroes are as usual Glaswegian working class men struggling with drink problems, the violence of others, bureaucracy or the burden of erotic desire. Very male – you hear in most stories that women are different, and many of the stories appear to be attempts to understand their (it is as if they are a different species) motivations: eg the naive student’s thoughts as he makes his way home to Glasgow on a coach from an English university where everybody – it becomes apparent – is rich (relatively), including his ‘girlfriend’ who may be using him as her ‘bit of rough’, and then there’s the man trying to persuade his ex to stop seeing a married man, and the husband who comes home early from his shift, and may have been sacked, but doesn't want to alarm his wife. Nearly all the pieces are ‘streams of consciousness’ mingled with dialogue and have no plot, the method is you sit inside the man’s head for a bit then it ends. Sounds uninviting maybe, and he won’t appeal to everyone, but the writing is marvellous: sweeping, accurate, albeit repetitive and sometimes - deliberately - awkward. I'd like to quote more but had to take my book back to the library.
There is a definite 80s/90s feel to the writing and concerns even though there is mention of mobile phones and social networking, another thing that may put people off. But along with the humour and political rant there is a great tenderness in these pieces, along with unending questions and philosophical debate, a search for understanding and a warmth that people don’t necessarily associate with Kelman (I think it has always been there). Above all it is funny, sweary, absurd, provoking. Lovely stuff.
June 8, 2010
Apart from possibly Agnes Owen, Kelman's short stories are the best around
December 7, 2018
Couldn’t finish it. Did not like it at all.
September 11, 2023
Kelman's "stream of brogueishness narration," as one reviewer called it, is startlingly pure, though his characters tend to be anything but. Indeed, his often down-and-outers and other outliers constantly struggle for the appropriate word to come to grips with their struggles with their lives, their loves and their observations. From time to time they fail, and their thoughts simply halt mid-sentence, or lead to a non sequitur. But along the way, Kelman relates real life, sometimes brutally, always with a ring of truth.
August 5, 2023
Class, culture, language, existentialism, relationships, communication, politics, art, memory, reflection, identity... Recurring themes in James Kelman's stories coupled with his powerfully affecting prose. A human being fully revealed in his time and place. Kelman is more concerned with the inner lives of his characters, laying bare their stream of consciousness on the pages. A true artist and master short story writer.
April 6, 2022
Mostly incoherent. These stories are not short stories but rather individual scenes which have no start and no end - they are just the middle. Nothing poignant. Nothing beautiful. Just swearing and ogling.
November 19, 2023
Vignettes of Scottish working class life. Not a lot of action, being mostly internal monologue, but insightful.
August 24, 2014
I received this book for free thru a giveaway from the Goodreads First Reads program. And I am always forever grateful & totally thrilled each & every time that I win a free book! This is why I absolutely hate to write less than a raving review for this book. Let me get something perfectly clear from the very beginning... This was NOT a terrible book! I'm just not smart enough to get this book. I'm not intellectually refined enough to enjoy the writers' words. Which is my problem & not Mr.James Kelmans problem. His book is very well put together, so if you are a person who enjoys deep musings, then this book is made for you!
January 2, 2016
Picked this up from VoA for no money on the south side.
This book is a series of short stories wrote from a Scottish man's perspective. None of the stories are the same man, but they all have the same discontent, unsure, underdog sort of voice. A few of the stories feature love and women, and those realistic in a nice, endearing way. But the book is also full of shorter stories that don't have much context and are a rambling stream of consciousness that seems genuine but a bit too consistently stereotypical dirty vagabond scenes.
This book is a series of short stories wrote from a Scottish man's perspective. None of the stories are the same man, but they all have the same discontent, unsure, underdog sort of voice. A few of the stories feature love and women, and those realistic in a nice, endearing way. But the book is also full of shorter stories that don't have much context and are a rambling stream of consciousness that seems genuine but a bit too consistently stereotypical dirty vagabond scenes.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews