When James Kelman"s novel How Late it Was, How Late won the Booker prize in 1994, it caused a storm of critical and popular debate. This debate still continues to revolve around books such as Irving Welsh"s Trainspotting, which are seen as continuing the style of foul-mouthed Scottish prose. At the time of its publication, reviewers concerned themselves with counting the number of times that the word "fuck" was used in the book, rather than trying to detect any worth within its socially conscious portrayal of a life in the deprived areas of Glasgow. When reviewers did actually look at...
he continues to battle and rage even though his situation is pretty hopeless. No doubt our compassion for and connection with Sammy is mainly established by the use of interior monologue as outlined above. However, the use of the third person narrative also means that we have, perhaps, a better view of what is going on that if we only had Sammy"s word for it. Instinctively, perhaps, he is not a narrator which one might be inclined to trust exactly, and the addition of an omni-present narrator who backs up Sammy"s statements of fact reassures our trust in him.