From amazon.co.uk:

Living in a no-bedroomed tenement flat, coping with the cold and boredom of busconducting and the bloody-mindedness of Head Office, knowing that emigrating to Australia is only an impossible dream, Robert Hines finds life to be 'a very perplexing kettle of coconuts'. The compensations are a wife and child, and a gloriously anarchic imagination. The Busconductor Hines is a brilliantly executed, uncompromising slice of the Glasgow scene, a portrait of working-class life which is unheroic but humane.


(My copy has a different cover)

Finally read this over the last week or so! It's an interesting book - quite hard to read because the grammar and punctuation you'd normally expect (particularly for dialogue) is almost completely missing! However, I think the style gave it a great energy. My fondness for Irvine Welsh was definitely a help - quite a lot of the phrases used in his books (greet, for example) also appear in here. I'd be interested in finding out if Welsh had read Kelman's work at any stage. I didn't particularly like Busconductor Hines. He was lazy and unrealistic. However, I kept feeling great dread at any hint of a breakup in his relationship with wife Sandra so perhaps I had more sympathy for him than I realised. The book is set in 1984 (or so), though in a lot of ways it felt much older than that. It also reminded me a lot of another book that I'd read - in terms of the situation Hines and his wife was in - but I can't remember for the life of me what it was now! Will update if I remember :-/

Anyway, crimson-tide has requested this book in the VBBOz and I'll send it to her during the next week!!

Thanks KLL - yet another one for the 1001 stack!

I recently read another of Kelman's; "How Late It Was, How Late" which has an interior monologue style full of Glaswegian terms and also with the lack of grammar and punctuation you mention, so I'll be prepared. ;-)

Update September 2010:
Reserved for the 1001+ Books VBB.

Typical Kelman in terms of both the language and the characters, although the language wasn't as hard to follow as the other of his I'd read. It's all about life in working class Glasgow. Not much fun really. The men are mostly boorish when they get together, they can't appear too intelligent or ambitious or buck the expectations; and the women are mostly ignored.

Can't say I enjoyed it all that much. "How Late It Was, How Late" came across as more gutsy somehow.


Off now to dolphin-au as he chose it from the 1001+ books VBB a while back.

Posting to dolphin-au as part of the 1001+ books VBB.

Arrived safely, thanks crimson-tide. I haven't read anything by Kelman before, so don't really know what to expect.

I can't say I enjoyed this book much either. I guess if I want to hear no-hopers swear and being stupid I could just go to the pub. I have very little interest in reading what I guess is a fairly accurate portrait of these people, and did not manage to finish the book.
I will offer this in the 1001 VBB,but can't really recommend it. I don't think it should be listed in the first place, but if anyone insists I am willing to send it out.

Sent to perfect-circle as part of the 1001 VBB on Bookobsessed. Hope you enjoy it more than I did!

Arroved safely in the UK.