A disaffection

Ah dear, another one of those Kelman books which, if it doesn't lull you into the Scottish, Glaswegian dialect of the endless verbal circumlocutions of our very disaffected schoolteacher protagonist, of sorts - one Patrick Doyle - isn't going to catch your fancy. A pity, for this is really quite a lovely book. No, it doesn't pack the wallop of Kelman's later, Booker-winning masterpiece "How Late it Was, How Late," but this is as it should be. This book - despite the ambience of grim Glasgow in the 1980s - brims over with humour, sweetness and light.Doyle plods around Glasgow and its environs, mooning over a fellow schoolteacher he's never going to get (She's married.). He obsesses about all manner of recondite lore including Pythagoras and the German Romantic poet Holderlin, dragging the reader along with him down these esoteric byways with no end in sight.One is never quite sure as to which way the narrative is going to turn until it veers into the kitchenette in brother Gavin's and sister-in-law Nicola's flat. But I'll leave that scene for the reader to discover.Some might say that this is a meandering, nearly solipsistic, navel-gazing exercise in gazing into the past. To which Pat Doyle would make reply:"But this is because he was a single chap and single chaps are single persons ergo they dwell on the past and there is nothing wrong in dwelling on the past. How can you dwell on the future? There is nothing to dwell on! It doesni exist. It is a blank. Everything has yet to take place. This is what the future is, the place where things have yet to occur. So how can you dwell on that? You're cheating. Okay but just think of it as an empty room. No. Well then.... "And he goes on and on. And if the reader didn't at least notice a wee smile crossing his/her face whilst reading this excerpt of Pat's musings, then this book is nae for the likes of him/her!

I began 'A Disaffection' enthusiastically. Aside from the brilliant Glaswegian vernacular and some tasty morsels of cynicism, however, the book felt long, slowly paced, and overdrawn. Doyle's character and predicament -- his disillusionment, like of drink, near-obsession with co-worker Alison, and fascination with cardboard pipes, of all things -- are largely described and summed up within the first two pages. Literally. After these, everything is redundant. Doyle is dissatisfied, and true to the title, disaffected; you'll likely feel the same after reading this novel.

Great book... bought as a Christmas present for sister in laws boyfriend

Good book

Quality James Kelman. Dissolve into this Glasgow prose. A must read if you are a fan.

I can't remember the last time I had to drag my way through a book so much. the story of a depressed school teacher which comprised almost entirely the internal thinking of the teacher. There was very little that actually happened, but rather just long rambling depressing diatribes about who knows what. I get that he was depressed, but did you really need to spend every page of the book getting that across and only managing to depress the reader as well??? This was compounded by having no clear breaks to the rambling - no chapters but just never ending long paragraphs made you think that your life would end before you got to the end of the book.