Fresh is a quick, to-the-point read that is very easy to get sucked into.

This is a day-in-the-life account of Sean; a factory worker living from week to week in a Glasgow McNay paints in very harsh colours. It's winter, it's cold and grey, the characters are strong, brutal and looking out for themselves. But despite the poverty and grime of the setting, and the harsh practicality of everyday life here which screams at you from the very first page, there is a lot of gentleness to be found in this book. Sean's relationships with his family members are profoundly touching in their quiet passion and his unravelling feelings towards his brother, Archie, become truly upsetting and poignant.

There is also dark comedy in abundance here, particularly in the bawdy humour of the main characters. For all the tension, hatred and worry of Sean's day, we find our protagonist in a series of comic situations and engaged in a number of conversations which manage to be grossly entertaining.

The working class life Fresh describes is etched and mirrored into the small details of Sean's day; the monotony of the factory conveyor belts, his conversations with colleagues, the routine of rolling his cigarettes. Set against this though are the very powerful and wonderfully evocative descriptive passages of Sean's daydreams and flights of fancy throughout the day. From the perfection of a freshly laid out Sunday lunch with a wholesome, happy family, to the idea of himself as a bathing emperor being fed cooled grapes by a slave girl, Sean's imagination add patches of colour to his otherwise drab life and speak of a desire for change and a better life that the reader feels unable to begrudge him.

Fresh isn't in any way a perfect read though. Notwithstanding his efforts at writing the Scottish accent, McNay's writing is often clunky and stilted, and although this may be an attempt to capture the language skills at work in Sean's community, it comes off as poorly thought out and badly executed. Also, after the long build up to the inevitable confrontation between the two brothers, I felt the ending left a lot to be desired and the book jerked and stumbled its way to a very unsatisfying conclusion.

Fresh is above all a book about poverty, family and choice, and a well accomplished attempt at evoking the pain and humour of life for Glasgow's working class. ( )

I received this novel as part of the Early Reviewers group.

Fresh is set in a single day in Glasgow, Scotland. Sean works in a chicken factory and is informed that his brother Archie is being released from prison several months early, which is a particular problem for Sean, as he owes a large sum of money to Archie that was entrusted to him when Archie was put in prison. Unfortunately Sean has spent a large portion of this, and so he attempts to scrape together enough money to pay Archie back.

The story is written from Sean's point of view, and is told, in the main, using a Scottish dialect in a similar style to Irvine Welsh. There are also a large number of flashbacks telling the story of Sean and Archie growing up together and Archie's descent into crime, as well as several shorter fantasy elements that show Sean daydreaming.

This is Mark McNay's debut novel, and is an enjoyable read. The story is fast-paced and both gritty and funny. Even when Sean has managed to pay Archie back, we are shown he still cannot escape the presence of his brother and ultimately he has to make difficult decisions as to whether to put his own family ahead of his brother. ( )

This gritty modern novel is set in present-day Glasgow, and charts one fateful day in Sean O’Grady’s life – the day when his wayward brother Archie is released from prison. This wouldn’t be a problem, except Sean was looking after some money for Archie and he has spent it. We spend the day with Sean, working in the chicken factory (from whence the novel gets its title) sharing his fears, daydreams and increasingly desperate attempts to obtain the cash to pay off his brother.

The concept of the entire novel lasting only one day of Sean’s life is an interesting one, but fell a little flat for me. It seems to drag in places, and the reader’s concept of time can start to slip – there seems to be too much happening at one point, and not enough at others. What exacerbates this is the use of flashbacks to illustrate Sean’s relationship with Archie, and Archie’s slow slide into serious crime, drugs and violence. However, these are vital to the plot, and illustrate how one can be exposed to such influence, without ever totally succumbing to them. Sean manages to rise above Archie’s behaviour, and even though he is bullied into helping him at times, never falls fully into the same trap, instead concentrating on his work, his family and a few pints at the weekend.

A couple of technical points. The novel features a lot of dialogue between characters which is written in Glaswegian dialect and pronunciation and uses virtually no punctuation to define speech (such as quotation marks.) This can be confusing at first, and the reader who is unfamiliar with Glasgow speech and dialect may get a little lost at times. The conversations between characters are terse, partly through their familiarity and partly down to the speech pattern of this part of the world. However, it adds an edge of reality and gives a real flavour to the writing. The author is obviously very familiar both with Glasgow and its people, though it is unlikely that Glasgow Council will be using this book as an advertising tool any time soon. It paints a picture of a life lived on the edge of crime, poverty and violence, of a man trying to do right by his family when all around is temptation to take the easier path, and of a dirty, grey, uncaring city with a dark underbelly of housing schemes, neglect and drugs.

Overall I enjoyed this novel. There are a couple of moments where you fear the author is going to follow a well-trodden and overly obvious path, but he veers away and leads you in a different direction, culminating in an ending that is both shocking and utterly inevitable. The novel, at its best, positively reeks of Sean’s fear, his hand-rolled cigarettes and the abscessed chickens in the factory. This is not a novel for the squeamish or the vegetarian. ( )

This is Mark McNay’s first novel and clearly draws on first hand knowledge of the day to day grind of a certain working class life where a full belly, a warm fire and a good woman is perfection. It fits within a British tradition of “kitchen sink realism” kicked of by John Osbourne’s “Look back in Anger” in the 50’s that looks at the dreams and anger of the working class man and woman. Think of Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday night and Sunday morning or the film work to the current day of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, both of whom continue to create powerful films unafraid of tackling head on current social problems.

The story follows a day in the life of Sean working in a chicken packing factory**, who discovers that his Brother Archie has come out of jail early ( in for violence and drugs related crime). This sets up a chain of events with tragic consequences as Sean has spent most of a money clip he was banking for his brother. He desperately struggles during the course of the day to borrow the money from family and from the firm. The novel also by flashbacks reveals Sean’s and Archie’s childhood and life up to the events of the day. Sean is no angel; he gambles, takes a more or less willing part as a pick up in his brother’s drug’s network and will use his fists. But unlike his brother does with his family needs in mind- his own and that of his uncle and aunt who gave him a home when his father left and mother died. And it’s for his family that he has to fight for as the day develops.

The story unfolds through a lot of dialogue and switches between first and third person perspectives rather then description although we get’s Sean’s flights of imagination for colour. The dialogue is written in Glaswegian but it doesn’t jar and often it’s in the silences between characters that speak more. The speech patterns (expect sentences where F**k can be a noun, verb, adjective and have several meanings from love to hate! and the mundane events of the day convey tenderness, violence and humour in scene after scene with warm believable characters.

It’s remarkable that the author started a creative writing course in his late forties in 1999 which lead to this award winning (Arts Foundation New Fiction 2007) novel. Hope for all us yet! It is by no means perfect, as the ending is a little flat and the characterisation of Archie teeters on the edge of caricature but it’s an easy page turner and I can’t wait for the Ken Loach channel four adaptation that surely must be in pre production talks as you read this!

** and you may want to rethink eating cheap value chicken after reading the book! ( )

Fresh by Mark McNay, its about two brothers from Glasgow, how they have grown apart and the lead up to the inevitable conclusion. Its written in a sort of pigeon Glaswegian in a similar stylised fashion as Irvine Welsh (complete with optional punctuation), which made my head hurt, but still its well written and you'll want to read to the end despite the writing style, the fact that it takes its own sweet time to get there, and the ending is a little predictable. I guess that doesn't make it sound attractive prospect but its good entertainment. ( )