That Was a Shiver, and Other Stories / James Kelman

This collection has a certain tense, breathless quality, as though each story constantly threatened to trip and fall on its face yet by some miracle managed to remain upright. Given the difficulty of getting a firm hold on either plot or characters, we are left with a style that consists of repetitions ("so what" and "who cares" appear as a leitmotiv throughout), staccato sentences, and profanity aplenty. There are also frequently disorienting switches from vernacular to refined speech and back again — a daring move on James Kelman's part. I would be remiss not to mention the contrast between the protagonists' hesitant thoughts or utterances and the author's confidence of execution.

All in all, reading these stories felt like being stuck, either in some obsessive person's head, or on a nightmarish series of elevator rides with unsavoury strangers who insisted on describing perfectly banal, inconsequential moments in their lives in painstaking detail.

I was provided with a free electronic copy of this book through NetGalley by the publisher, Canongate, in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: **