Greyhound for Breakfast - Hardcover

Kelman, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374166870 ISBN 13: 9780374166878

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1990

Synopsis

A collection of short stories revealing the toughness and the ironies of life among the inner cities and tenement blocks of Glasgow, Manchester, and London

About this title

About the Author:

James Kelman was born in Glasgow in 1946. After leaving school at 15 he worked in the printing industry and as a bus driver. In 1971 he attended creative writing night classes and in 1973 an American company published his first collection of short stories, An Old Pub Near the Angel. Greyhound for Breakfast won the 1987 Cheltenham Prize; A Disaffection won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize; How Late It Was, How Late won the 1994 Booker Prize amidst a storm of controversy. He has also written many plays for stage and radio. He lives in Glasgow with his wife and family.

From Publishers Weekly:

Writing in tough, sometimes grim language, Glasgow native Kelman (A Chancer, The Busconductor Hines) conveys the streets, pubs and tenements of Glasgow, Manchester and London. This collection of 47 stories is an uneven assortment; to read them together is like finding a precious stone under one rock and an unsavory object under the next. A unifying voice throughout the stories lulls with a gentle lilting wit, but that same voice can turn into a nasty snarl. And even at its mildest, there is hardly a page in the book without several obscene words. Some of the stories are only a paragraph long, while others are rambling monologues of several pages. Perhaps the best writing lies in the affecting third-person narratives in which Kelman deftly evokes a mood, a place, a character or a situation without relying on the gimmicks of some of the more experimental pieces. Powerful to the end, this novel is distinctly kin to Hubert Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn in its raw and disturbing evocation of working-class existence.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0374166870
• ISBN 13: 9780374166878
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 229