A Chancer (Picador Books) - Tapa blanda

Tammas is twenty, a loner and compulsive gambler. Unable to hold a job for long, his life revolves around Glasgow bars, home with his sister and brother-in-law, the dog track, betting shops, casinos, and occasionally a day at the races. Sometimes Tammas wins, more often he loses, but betting gives him as good a chance as any of discovering what he really seeks from life since society offers him no prospect of a better or more fulfilling alternative.

‘The novel flows enjoyably as a series of episodes, some of them truncated bits of dialogue, often with a jerky syntax reflecting the way in which experiences are actually felt by the characters. Kelman’s broad sympathy results in a vital depiction of everything stagnant as well as the possibility of a new beginning at the very end, much of it achieved through understated eloquence’ Times Literary Supplement

‘Kelman’s best novel so far . . . This is the most depressingly fair and sophisticated picture of Glasgow life, at one of its most significant levels, that has yet been written: I respect its craft and truth enormously’ Books in Scotland

‘A highly original production in which Kelman conveys a brilliant impression of the malaise of contemporary life . . . This understated novel about ordinary desperation should win him an even larger readership’ British Book News

‘Remarkable . . . Kelman accepts patois for what it is, not what the dictionary tells him it is: the language of his place now. He insists on its cadences, eccentricities, diction, its cursing and swearing, its profanity, all as necessary parts to be fitted together into a realism that does not fudge the truth’ Glasgow Herald