How Late It Was, How Late (1994)

This is an excellent novel (don’t take it from me – it won the Booker Prize) about a low-life drunk and the indignities he suffers trying to get welfare. That it’s written in an accent would usually get on my nerves fast, but Kelman is simply too good. Here’s how it starts: “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.” Just try not to hear Groundskeeper Willie when you read it. ( )

How Late It Was, How Late is a stream of consciousness novel from the perspective of Sammy, a small-time criminal from Glasgow, Scotland. Sammy wakes up on the street after a weekend drinking binge, much of which he’s blacked out, and ends up getting further into trouble by antagonizing two undercover cops, who then beat him senseless. After waking up in jail, Sammy finds he’s gone blind. From that point, it all goes downhill for him.

Since losing his sight, Sammy is forced to make some important decisions and reevaluate certain aspects of his life. While he attempts this, his mental state alternates between paranoid belligerence and a zen-like acceptance of his situation. He is essentially on his own, without any family or close friends, for much of the novel. Long, painful passages where he walks alone from the police station to his apartment almost suffocate the reader with a deep sense of loneliness and isolation. The descriptions of Sammy’s dealings with doctors and social service workers are equally disturbing. He’s consistently treated as a nuisance or even subhuman, making it impossible for him to get the help he needs. No one actually listens to him.

All of this leads to one of the most fascinating aspects of the novel: Sammy is such an unlikely main character. It’s difficult to identify any qualities that might make him a convincing candidate for center stage. He would normally play a minor role, perhaps dying in the first act or hanging around for comic relief. I would compare him to someone like Skinny Pete from Breaking Bad... although older and Scottish. He’s not very bright. He doesn’t have good looks or sex appeal. And he’s not even a particularly skilled criminal. He’s also not bad enough to be an intriguing bad guy. But we’re inside his head for 374 pages and it really drives home the idea that everyone has a voice and a story and reasons for doing what they do. I would contrast this with the stories in The Acid House, by Irvine Welsh (which I read several years ago and hated), where all the characters are grotesque caricatures of down and out people. While Sammy comes from this same world, Kelman writes him with a great deal more respect.

Even though I think 75 pages or so could have been edited out, I really enjoyed this novel and recommend it. The Scottish dialect takes a few pages to get used to, but it was not as difficult as I thought it would be. If excessive swearing bothers you, please be aware that there are roughly 20 instances of the f-word per page. ( )

You're gony have to read this book. There's nay doubt about it, nay doubt.

Of course, if you're easily offended by strong language aye, then it's probably no for you.

For a potty mouth like me it was aye a bit of a shock like.

Of course I was completely sucked in by the Scottish accent. It was hard going though. I was beginning to wonder if it was ever going to end. With a hundred pages left I was telling anyone that was willing to listen that I deserved a bloody medal for finishing it. I read bits out aloud to the family so they knew what I was dealing with. Well, it just about made Bel's boyfriend fall off his chair in shock at a girl's mother speaking like that. The hubby pronounced it poetry aye. I suspect it's a bloke's book by and large and I'd welcome a discussion with blokes about it.

We are introduced to Sammy as he wakes up from a really bad hangover.....slumped in the corner of a pavement somewhere, wearing someone else's sneakers. He is the perfect anti-hero. I spent most of the book wishing he'd have a bath and a shave. Simple things aye but they really got on me nerves. Does anything happen?...well yes, in a way....You're on the edge of your seat most of the time waiting for it to happen. If you want to witness character development on a grandiose scale then this is the book for you. I felt I knew every inch of Sammy by the end. As readers, we're living and breathing his stream of consciousness, which is exhausting but I was up for the challenge.

Philosophers have argued about what constitutes reality since time immemorial. "What's reality?" they debate amongst themselves..."Is it me or is it you?...Is it this chair or is it this glass of wine?" Obviously some poor wretch is making the bed and cleaning the bath while they pontificate and excruciate over the wretched question. There was a bit of me that wondered while reading this novel..."Is it all in Sammy's head?" Which led me to the next philosophical thought...."How much of our life happens in our head?" Now you're probably thinking - "She's getting all philosophical like that Alex Daw." Aye - mebbe. But it's a fact isn't it? You cannay get away from the voice in your head. You try and avoid it like but it's always there - lurking....waiting to catch you. Commenting on your cleaning of the bath - ooh, it's not like your mam used to do it. Urging you to get on with that reading for Uni so you don't get behind like. Helping you tackle your life - or not, as may be the case.

Some would argue that this scumbag of a character is not worth knowing. But who are we to judge? If you got thumped by a scumbag like Sammy, you'd want to know what provoked him wouldn't you? Well, I would. But then I'm different. I've got that voice in my head. Have you? What does your voice say? Does it endlessly repeat itself ? Does it have a cute accent? Does it love you very much? Does it love anyone else? What makes it change its pitch? Does it keep you together?

Well I didn't get a medal but I did finish this book. As you would expect from an anti-hero, Sammy exits stage left at the end of the novel still wearing those wretched toe-pinching sneakers. And I was gunning for him too. Now that's a sign of a good book isn't it? - that even if it's a bloody struggle, you want to get to the end...to see what happens like.

I'd best get to scrubbing that bath, now...like....mebbe...aye. ( )

This Booker Prize-winning novel is unusual, to say the least. Sammy is a small-time shoplifter who gets busted one morning after a weekend drinking binge, most of which he doesn't remember. And somehow he's completely lost his sight. The story is told entirely in a lower-class Scottish dialect, and it takes a while to get into the language and the cadence:
There wasnay much he could do, there wasnay really much he could do at all. No the now anyway. Nayn of it was down to him. It would be soon enough but no the fucking now. So fuck it, get on with yer life. Sammy had turned back onto his side, he wished he could fall asleep. But the trouble with sleep is ya cannay just fucking. (p. 29)

Got that? How about 374 pages of it, with no chapter breaks? When I started reading, I thought I would really dislike this book because of the dialect and the almost continuous use of the f-word. But after a while, I realized that Sammy sounded just like Scottish comedian Billy Connolly, and he had kind of grown on me. Sammy first finds himself first in jail, and when he is let go and returns home, discovers his girlfriend has left him. Because of his new disability, everything about daily living is a challenge. But there's humor in his story, too, most notably in the ridiculous bureaucracy he encounters when attempting to register for disability benefits. Sammy's life has been a hard one, lived mostly on the streets and in pubs, and it becomes clear that he is his own worst enemy, remaining just a step away from complete self-destruction.

I'm not sure I would recommend this book, but in an odd way it wasn't bad. ( )

The two major presenting features of this novel, the Scottish dialect and the repeated profanities, are likely to polarise opinion. There will be those who, in agreement with Booker judge Rabbi Julia Neuberger, will castigate it as "crap", while others will eulogise it for very much the same reasons.

I find that my personal distaste for the f-word can be laid aside when its use is fully appropriate to the work. This is a challenging book to read - the stream of consciousness, unfinished sentences and lack of chapters will not be to everyone's taste. But a quality novel should provide the reader with an unique experience. How Late it Was, How Late does this exactly. The reader is drawn into the mind of the ex-convict Sammy and his struggles with his down-and-out life in Glasgow.

This is all too easy a target for those who want to sneer at the Booker Prize and the oeuvre of modern novels and all too easy a champion for those who would applaud and get vicarious pleasure from the liberal use of obscenities in literature. In reality this book deserves a deeper consideration and analysis than either of those fates.

Kelman has a barely disguised loathing for the failure of social services to provide help for those in society such as Sammy. Here is displayed a visceral hatred and mistrust between the two parties, neither of who can move to the common ground that could open communication between them. Sammy and Social Services have diametrically opposed aims and philosophies, in Kelman's bleak view there is no prospect of accommodation on either side.

I particularly enjoyed the lack of resolution at the end of this novel. I abhor the contrived endings that many authors find necessary to bolt onto the end of otherwise solid books - Vernon God Little comes to mind where a tumescent glowing baboon's backside is grafted onto an otherwise controlled comic novel. ( )