bookswithbethany's review against another edition
dark
funny
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
kittmonkey's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
bookhoarder_alissa's review against another edition
2.0
I thought I would really hate it but somehow I don't really do. But I'm not a fan of it either and did not really enjoy reading it. Partly because some passages tended to make me frustrated about all the characters being so damn annoying. At the same time I was not as much bothered by the writing style as I had feared and there was an actual flow while following the stream of consciousness.
damc's review against another edition
1.0
even had there not been so many f-bombs (sometimes as many as three in a line!), i still would have found myself at a loss to care much for the protagonist. hard to follow, repetitive, dull.
cathdm's review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Loved the language but confused by the ending
iainkelly_writing's review against another edition
2.0
Conflicted. I should like this book - a Booker prize-winning novel set in my home city of Glasgow and written in the Glaswegian dialect. I really wanted to like this book.
But the curse of Booker struck again (see also Milkman by Anna Burns). It's a tough slog to read, with deliberately disconcerting sentences and paragraphs left unfinished. It starts with an interesting premise but then the plot goes absolutely nowhere. The pace crawls along, pages and pages endlessly repeating, conversations that go in circles and end up nowhere.
The dialect is good to read, the swearing is true to life, but there are little niggles - having lived in Glasgow my whole life, I have never heard anyone refer to police officers as 'soldiers'.
And then there's Sammy, the main character. The trouble with people like Sammy, working class, down on his luck, ex-con, is that artists and authors romanticize them into something they're not. In truth, this sort of character can be found in Glasgow, and generally they are not very nice people. So it's hard to have any empathy.
And by the end, it all seems a bit pointless and not worth the effort - and then I read the quotes on the covers lauding it and remember it won the Booker and I think I really must be missing something.
But the curse of Booker struck again (see also Milkman by Anna Burns). It's a tough slog to read, with deliberately disconcerting sentences and paragraphs left unfinished. It starts with an interesting premise but then the plot goes absolutely nowhere. The pace crawls along, pages and pages endlessly repeating, conversations that go in circles and end up nowhere.
The dialect is good to read, the swearing is true to life, but there are little niggles - having lived in Glasgow my whole life, I have never heard anyone refer to police officers as 'soldiers'.
And then there's Sammy, the main character. The trouble with people like Sammy, working class, down on his luck, ex-con, is that artists and authors romanticize them into something they're not. In truth, this sort of character can be found in Glasgow, and generally they are not very nice people. So it's hard to have any empathy.
And by the end, it all seems a bit pointless and not worth the effort - and then I read the quotes on the covers lauding it and remember it won the Booker and I think I really must be missing something.
sshabein's review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Though of course the premise of this sounded interesting enough for me to pick it up in the first place, I was still surprised by how much I liked it. It's unusual — not because of being written in dialect, but because of how that is combined with its stream of conscious delivery, no chapters, and the main character is blind. It's good. And darkly funny at times. I'm glad I read it.