James Kelman

In Scotland, the portrait of a petty crook who had one run-in with police too many. It is a series of reflections as he sits in jail, contemplating his fate. He had been in trouble before, but this time it's different, the latest brawl with police cost him his eyesight. Now in addition to all his other troubles he is blind.

Jeremiah Brown is a man of extremes.So when he nips out for a quick drink on the eve of returning to his native Scotland after twelve years in America, anything could happen. Anything at all. Just one quick drink to help him sleep but there's something about this town and this bar that reminds him of his ex. Soon the memories are flooding in and as the night goes on and the decision to stop smoking looks increasingly ill-timed for a card-carrying alien of questionable politics, Jeremiah getting on that flight tomorrow starts to seem far from certain. Is there any such thing as a certainty? Not tonight. Tonight the only thing certain is that you have to be very careful in the land of the free.

"The twenty first-person narratives in The Good Times portray ordinary people in a language that makes a glory of their lives. The narrators are men and boys who come face-to-face with uncomfortable truths, whether musing on mortality, encountering betrayals both devastating and trivial, or struggling to understand women or work."--BOOK JACKET.

Collects short stories that penetrate the minds of characters in such everyday situations as convalescing in a hospital, sitting at a bus stop, and being in a living room with a vacuum cleaner.

Intimate new stories from the Booker Prize-winning James Kelman, bringing 'alive a human consciousness like no other writer can'. A trucker passes through a town he used to know and a local tries to sell him his sister; a couple put their children to bed and hear a loud scratching at the wall; a Principal and his associate examine the dead body before them; a man looks into a mirror and reflects on becoming more like his father. Sparky, touching and brilliantly daring, these stories reveal profound human feeling in the ordinary and the everyday, and are a reminder of Kelman's exceptional talent.

Passionate, exhilarating and darkly humorous, "The Burn" is an extraordinary collection of short stories by a master of paranoia and an unsurpassed prose stylist.