I am really not sure
what I just read. This book was a very controversial pick for the Booker Prize.
Some objected to its vulgarity, but that’s not what bothered me.
How Late It Was... is the stream-of-consciousness
story of a few days in the life of Sammy Samuels, petty criminal. He awakes
from a bender after a fight with his girlfriend and decides first thing to pick
a fight with some undercover cops. They beat him up and throw him in jail,
where he wakes up blind.
So I read on, expecting
to find out something, anything. Why has Sammy gone blind? Where has his
girlfriend gone? What happened during the day he blacked out? Why are the
police after him?
No answers are forthcoming.
Sammy’s monologue is generally engaging and insightful at times, but nearly four
hundred pages of Scottish dialect spoken by an anxiety-prone drunk is a wee bit
much, nay? It may be more accessible than James Joyce, but not any more satisfying.
No comments:
Post a Comment