Deliberately heavy in the use of profanities and Glaswegian dialect Mr Kelman wanted to write a book reflecting his own life experience and those in similar circumstances. He succeeded. The mundane life of Busconductor Hines, his wife and young child. Living in sub standard tenement housing i a job he doesn't like, probably capable of better things but he just can't bring himself to be bothered. Worried about his wife leaving him - but he needn't. She doesn't. ( )

Het droeve verhaal van busconducteur Hines, gevangen in een dead-end job, vrezend voor zijn huwelijk, dromend van een betere toekomst, evenwel zonder een weg naar die betere toekomst te zien. Kelmans kenmerkende stijl is ook hier allesoverheersend - heel wat interne monoloog, veel Schots idioom, humor, vloekwoorden, maatschappijkritiek, ... - maar misschien wat minder gebalanceerd dan in zijn latere romans. Dromen, gesprekken, fantasieën, herinneringen, observaties, ... het loopt bij momenten net iets te veel in elkaar over om het nog te volgen. Maar net zo goed staan een aantal pagina's verder de tranen in je ogen bij Hines' besef dat het allemaal bedroevend weinig zin heeft. ( )

I am really enjoying this book,despite the fact that the story is unravelling very slowly and leaves some unanswered questions. Unil now I find the main charcter deeply likeable and would give him a good hug and a cuppa most of the times. ( )

Bleak, bitter and wonderfully humane. 1980's Glasgow sounds lovely. ( )

A surprisingly funny account of life near the bottom of the heap in Glasgow. Written in the eighties, but probably drawing more on Kelman's experience in the seventies for its description of working life in a bus garage.

As everyone says, it's Kelman's language that makes (or, depending on your point of view, breaks) the book: it's a wonderfully lively, bouncy, even lyrical, torrent of words that cleverly captures the flavour of the way working-class people in Glasgow speak without slavishly following the rules of any existing dialect. It's a similar technique to the one Anthony Burgess uses in A clockwork orange, giving Kelman the freedom to indulge in literary flights of fancy when he needs to, whilst avoiding confronting the reader with more strange words than he needs to produce the required degree of alienation. As Burgess demonstrated, the danger is that you get carried away with your own cleverness: Kelman's a bit more restrained, but he does occasionally go over the top, notably with the succession of wilder and wilder images he uses for the bus crews' green uniforms, ending up like pastiche Flann O'Brian.

The story definitely takes second place to the language here, but for what it's worth it's an account of the paradoxical situation Hines finds himself in: to save his job and his marriage and get a decent place to live, Hines knows he needs to advance in life. He's an intelligent man, and is perfectly capable of acting in prudent and reliable ways if he wants to, but he understands that this would be a betrayal of an important part of his life, so he simply can't do it, any more than he can greet (i.e. weep) in public. He needs to stay at a level in life where he has so little that he's free to be irresponsible and jeopardise everything he has. ( )