Mo Said She Was Quirky
A Novel
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
James Kelman, the Man Booker Prize–winning author of How Late It Was, How Late, tells the story of Helen—a sister, a mother, a daughter—a very ordinary young woman. Her boyfriend said she was quirky but she is much more than that. Trust, love, relationships; parents, children, lovers; death, wealth, home: these are the ordinary parts of the everyday that become extraordinary when you think of them as Helen does, each waking hour. Mo Said She Was Quirky begins on Helen’s way home from work, with the strangest of moments when a skinny, down-at-heel man crosses the road in front of her and appears to be her lost brother. What follows is an inspired and absorbing story of twenty-four hours in the life of a young woman.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A daylong glimpse into the life of a London blackjack croupier, Kelman's latest novel slides easily between scene and free indirect rumination, combining ambitious psychological breadth with the necessary authorial restraint to fully inhabit the mind of Helen. Her musings are first triggered during an early-morning taxi ride when she sees a man who resembles her long-missing brother, Brian. Kelman's streaming prose depicts a typical day for Helen her anxious thoughts about raising a six-year-old daughter Sophie, or the joys and complications of living with Mo, her Pakistani boyfriend reflections inspired by idle moments spent gazing at old pictures, riding to work, or waiting for her clothes to dry. It is sometimes a frenetic place to be, as Kelman often shuns punctuation in favor of velocity. Helen tortures herself with unresolved memories, trying to reconcile a past that, with the death of her father and absence of her brother, can never be settled. Often, her cadence runs on like a mantra as she attempts to convince herself: "It happens in families; girl father, boy mother, it is so natural, a natural division, her and Dad, him and Mum; that is it, it is natural..." In the fleeting scenes that actively involve other characters, Kelman (How Late It Was, How Late) also knows how to draw back to near-omniscience, allowing Helen to observe along with the reader. Although sometimes labored, her deft observations are worth a close study.
