Details
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Title
If It Is Your Life
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Author
Kelman, James
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Binding
Paperback
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Condition
New
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Pages
280
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Volumes
1
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Language
ENG
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Publisher
Other Press
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Date
2014-07-15
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Bookseller's Inventory #
BR24800
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ISBN
9781590516225 / 1590516222
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Weight
0.78 lbs (0.35 kg)
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Dimensions
8.51 x 5.56 x 0.8 in (21.62 x 14.12 x 2.03 cm)
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Library of Congress subjects
Domestic fiction, Man-woman relationships
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Library of Congress Catalog Number
2013015138
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Dewey Decimal Code
FIC
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From the publisher
James Kelman, a writer of novels, short stories, plays, and political essays, was born in Glasgow in 1946. He won the Cheltenham Prize for Greyhound for Breakfast (1987) and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for A Disaffection (1989), which was also short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. His fourth novel, How Late It Was, How Late, won the Booker Prize in 1994. Kelman was awarded the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award in 1998. His short-story collection The Good Times (1999) won the Stakis Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year. In 2008 he won Scotland’s most prestigious literary award, the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award, for Kieron Smith, Boy. He is the author of a television screenplay, The Return (1991), and has written many plays for radio and theater. Kelman has taught creative writing at the University of Texas, Goldsmiths College of the University of London, and the University of Glasgow. His most recent novel, Mo Said She Was Quirky, was published by Other Press in 2013.
Excerpt
“Bangs & a Full Moon”
A fine Full Moon from the third storey through the red r from the city lights: this was the view. I gazed at it, lying outstretched on the bed-settee. I was thinking arrogant thoughts of that, Full Moons, and all those awful fucking writers who present nice images in the presupposition of universal fellowship under the western Stars when all of a sudden: BANG, an object hurtling out through the window facing mine across the street.
The windows on this side had been in total blackness; the building was soon to be demolished and formally uninhabited.
BANG. An object hurtled through another window. No lights came on. Nothing could be seen. Nobody was heard. Down below the street was deserted; broken glass glinted. I returned to the bed-settee and when I had rolled the smoke, found I already had one smouldering in the ashtray. I got back up again and closed the curtains. I was writing in pen & ink so not to waken the kids and wife with the banging of this machine I am now using.
Media reviews
“A set of strange tales that both frustrate and delight…[Kelman] is certainly more experimental, as this…collection shows, and he’s also a lot funnier. As well as being a keen observer of society’s underclasses and disenfranchised, Kelman also has a great eye for the absurdity of everyday life, something which comes to the fore in this collection…His impeccable command of language continues to make him an easy writer to admire.” —The Independent
“As always, [Kelman’s] at his best when transforming a fairly narrow spectrum of underclass experience into something uniquely pitched between Beckett and vernacular realism.” —The Guardian
“In Kelman’s hands, words are deployed so seemingly realistically but, of course, so artfully, they feel closer to reality than hard truth. This collection is teeming with life, and with death, or worse, and, as the title indicates, it is our lives he is writing about, ours all. It is a tour de force from a writer who treats language as carefully as if it were gold, and ends up turning it into something even more precious.” —The Herald (Scotland)
About the author
James Kelman, a writer of novels, short stories, plays, and political essays, was born in Glasgow in 1946. He won the Cheltenham Prize for Greyhound for Breakfast (1987) and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for A Disaffection (1989), which was also short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. His fourth novel, How Late It Was, How Late, won the Booker Prize in 1994. Kelman was awarded the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award in 1998. His short-story collection The Good Times (1999) won the Stakis Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year. In 2008 he won Scotland's most prestigious literary award, the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award, for Kieron Smith, Boy. He is the author of a television screenplay, The Return (1991), and has written many plays for radio and theater. Kelman has taught creative writing at the University of Texas, Goldsmiths College of the University of London, and the University of Glasgow. His most recent novel, Mo Said She Was Quirky, was published by Other Press in 2013.
