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. ( )

I gave this book about a hundred pages before giving up on it. It’s written entirely in dialect - Scottish. The odd thing is that it is third person, not first person, so the unseen, unnamed narrator is talking in dialect.

There are also no chapter breaks. That’s not enough by itself to make me give up on a book, but it is aggravating.

So I gave up on it. It just wasn’t worth the effort, and this is a Booker prize winner. Life’s too short… ( )

Not very much happens in Kelman's Booker Prize winning novel but it still manages to be compelling as we follow the amicable if potty-mouthed Sammy who finds himself blinded after a weekend drinking spree.Kelman's writing is so good, it's gold. He seizes the attention span and holds onto it through almost 400 pages, no easy feat considering that i) How Late is a stream of consciousness novel and ii) nothing actually happens. The vivid voice of Sammy and his Glaswegian vernacular is unforgettable. ( )

The official reviews below give you most of the dirt, but I have to say, throughout the whole book I was under the impression that he wasn't really blind... Shamming? Drunk? Or a metaphor? Maybe I missed something.

Kelman manages to make the book both a disorienting ramble through the mind of the unlikeable protagonist, and a commentary on the British social welfare system, Scotland, life among the poor & criminal classes, etc.

To make a dreadful Scots pun, it's a rather un-canny book. Scattered and brash. Good, but not great. Of this genre, I liked Trainspotting better. ( )

Sammy the ex-con after a drinking binge gets into a fight with some soldiers and wakes up blind in a police cell. The police deciding to wash their hands of the ne'er do well just dump him out on the streets of Glasgow to find his way home on his own. At the same moment waiting in his apartment is a note from his girlfriend who has just left him. A crash course in learning how to cope with his new condition he is now confronted with all kinds of obstacles. A proud man he has difficulty admitting that he needs help from anyone or anything and so we watch him as he tries to navigate between the walls of his apartment and the streets of his city--see him as he futilely takes on the bureaucracy of the state. Not an easy read in the sense that the reader himself has to cope with the characters angry and thick Scottish dialect and foul-mouthed exasperation but it is a book that I liked a lot and highly recommend. ( )