James Kelman has made use of the short form all of his writing
life, calling on the different traditions where such stories are central
within the culture, beginning and ending in freedom, the freedom to
create.
This collection of nearly a hundred pieces of very
short fiction spans five decades and reveals James Kelman’s mastery of
the form. As ever, Kelman insists on his characters telling their
stories in their own voices, whether in working-class Glaswegian dialect
or the dull menace of bureaucratic babble. Everyday tragedy and bleak
humor color these marvels of narrative efficiency, yet at their core
they are tender and full of human truth.