Reviews for What a Pity and Other Short Stories

The average rating for What a Pity and Other Short Stories based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-01-06 00:00:00 Reynaldo Reyna "The freedom would not come..." James Kelman's The Good Times features 20 frustrating, angry yet raw and tender fragments of the lives of men addressing uncomfortable truths and outcomes. Set in the damp, cold pubs, coffee shops, flats and streets of Glasgow, we encounter disillusioned, existential outsiders, some paranoid, others emotionally unstable and some philosophically astute, all attempting to overcome the absurd obstacles in life. The Good Times is as real and as honest as literature gets. An intense reading experience.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-09-10 00:00:00 Gregory Welch When this sort of stream of consciousness style works, it's brilliant. And sometimes here it did. But too often I wondered where the narrative was underneath the voice, and occasionally I wondered what the point of the piece was at the end. That said, I do find his style strangely addictive. It's just perhaps a bit hit or miss as to whether you get anything more from these stories than the vibrant immediacy of the way they're told.