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Amazon.co.uk Review
"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
Review
"A work of marvelous vibrance and richness of character...It convinces, it charms, it entertains, it informs and it has life." -- "New York Times Book Review"
"Witty, irreverent and thoroughly engrossing...Kelman is a major talent, and this is a bold, highly accomplished novel." -- "San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle"
"Witty, irreverent and thoroughly engrossing...Kelman is a major talent, and this is a bold, highly accomplished novel." -- "San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle"
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
24 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
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.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I literally stumbled upon this book whilst roaming around the huge Borders bookshop in Glasgow. I found myself in the Scottish literature section and "How late was, how late" had fallen on the floor causing me to trip over it. Taking this as a cosmic sign I bought the book and scurried back to work. What a find it was.
The book is written as a continuous train of thought from the main character Sammy (the bold Sammy) who wakes up from a weekend long bender to find himself in a police cell worse for wear. What really makes this book interesting is the writing style which flows of the page. The language may be a problem for some as it is written in the Glasgow vernacular although the author avoids becoming too incomprehensible to anyone outside the central belt. All in a all a great read and possibly would be a regular on the top 100 lists if it was not for the use of Glaswegian slang in the writing which may put some off. If there is one criticism, and the reason for four rather than five stars, is that it does lag a little at times part way through the second half. Otherwise though add it too your Amazon basket today!
The book is written as a continuous train of thought from the main character Sammy (the bold Sammy) who wakes up from a weekend long bender to find himself in a police cell worse for wear. What really makes this book interesting is the writing style which flows of the page. The language may be a problem for some as it is written in the Glasgow vernacular although the author avoids becoming too incomprehensible to anyone outside the central belt. All in a all a great read and possibly would be a regular on the top 100 lists if it was not for the use of Glaswegian slang in the writing which may put some off. If there is one criticism, and the reason for four rather than five stars, is that it does lag a little at times part way through the second half. Otherwise though add it too your Amazon basket today!
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Ulysses by Rab C. Nesbitt
People seem to either like or hate this book, and it's not surprising to see why. It is 374 (in my Minerva edition paperback) pages of a single unending stream of consciousness,... Read more
Published 8 days ago by J. Rottweiller Swinburne
Don't Mistake . . .
. . . "couthy" or "of the people" for good. This book is truly dreadful. Alasdair Gray can do it: Kelman can't.
Published 13 months ago by Yellow Duck
An enjoyable read
James Kelman's award winning novel strongly revolves around the feeling of disempowerment using the protagonist's blindness as its symbol. Read more
Published on 9 Jan 2010 by Karyn-Leigh Childs
How late it was, how late
For my first Man booker prize book I personally found this book quite a messy read, as it took me a while to get use to the Scottish phrasing and accent, and if you are easily... Read more
Published on 4 Jan 2009 by Chloe Lara
Eminently putdownable
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... Read more
Published on 16 Sep 2007 by D. V. Smith
Thinking hard....
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. Read more
Published on 23 Feb 2005 by Iain J McKinstry
A scottish booker winner
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. Read more
Published on 25 Mar 2004 by Ian Shine
beautiful, beautiful book
If you're looking for an action-packed plot with a satisfying conclusion, you've come to the wrong book. Read more
Published on 27 Dec 2003 by "beckettesque"
Deceptively simple
This book may appear simply to be the blind ramblings of a working-class Scottish male ex-con, but in fact it's a lot more than that. Read more
Published on 4 Mar 2003 by "squeakybean"
Not terribly impressive
It's true that the Sammy, the narrator, in HLIWHL is the voice of working class Glasgow made dependent on others by blindness etc etc and some of his conversations with authroity... Read more
Published on 22 Nov 2002 by Alex Magpie
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