Dirt Road By James Kelman

Prior to winning the Booker for his 1994 novel How Late It Was, How Late, it’s fair to say that one pretty much knew what to expect from James Kelman. In a series of bleakly brilliant early novels and short story collections such as The Busconductor Hines, A Disaffection, and Not Not While the Giro, Kelman excelled at laying bare the psyches of working class (usually male) Glaswegians and their lives of quiet desperation. Kelman’s style – an intimate third-person narrative voice relayed in demotic Glaswegian dialect – appeared at once so natural and uncensored that it could belie the great work that must have gone into it. As Kelman himself once said, with tongue (firmly) in cheek and chip (justifiably) on shoulder, when asked if he ever revised his work: "It jist comes oot, ah says, it`s the natchril rithm o the work klass, ah jist opens ma mooth and oot it comes."

However, Kelman’s post-Booker work has revealed him to be a writer not content to rest upon any laurels (and when said laurels were so hard won and so grudgingly-given this is only to be applauded). Instead, Kelman has seemed determined to strike out into bold new territory, willfully damning any critical expectations.

First there was the Kafkaesque abstractions of 2001’s intimidatingly-experimental Translated Accounts, followed by what is arguably Kelman’s masterpiece: Kieron Smith, Boy: an unsentimental and painstakingly-rendered account of early childhood. Less successful was the American-set You Have To Be Careful In The Land of the Free, its uncharacteristic first person narrative resulting in a peculiarly unengaging read. A patchy collection of short stories followed – Kelman’s prose seemingly at odds with contemporary youth and text-speak – but his 2014 novella, Mo Said She Was Quirky, was a joyous-if-slight return to form, as well as featuring another Kelman first in a female lead. Which brings us to Dirt Road, his latest full-length novel and perhaps the seventy-year old author’s most surprising new direction yet.

The first thing to be said about Dirt Road is that this is easily Kelman’s most satisfying work since Kieron Smith, Boy. And like that earlier novel, a child takes centre-stage. Sixteen year old Murdo MacArthur has lost both his mother and sister to a form of cancer that “struck through the female line and ended in death. Males cannot help. All they can do is be there and be supportive. What else? Nothing. Nothing, there is nothing.”  Still grieving, still struggling to adapt to or get past this great nothing that has decimated their family, Murdo and his father leave their home in the Scottish islands to visit emigrant relatives in the American South. Upon arriving in America there is a curious encounter with a family of zydeco-playing musicians which will have ramifications for Murdo and his father later on. For now though, Murdo is simply besotted by both the music of elderly matriarch, Queen Monzee-ay, and by the beauty of her granddaughter, Sarah. An accomplished accordionist himself, Murdo sits in on the jam session and is promptly invited to play with the family in a fortnight’s time at a festival in Lafayette. Vague plans are made before Murdo and his father move on to Uncle John’s and Aunt Maureen’s, where the main action Dirt Road takes place.

If the meeting between Murdo and Queen Monzee-ay strikes rather an odd note, then the fortnight break with Scottish relatives finds Kelman on much more familiar – and, it has to be said, firmer – ground. Here the novel comes into its own. It bristles with raw, unspoken grief and of loss told in ellipses. Murdo and his father lead an insular existence, quietly needling one another as they tiptoe around any potential issues in an attempt to avoid confrontation. While Murdo’s father is content to sit and read, Murdo yearns to kick over the traces – though a trip to the local mall and a walk around the block are, for now, the extent of his independence:

“What a life. Murdo was glad to be walking. Shopping malls opened on a Sunday. No matter about church and everything else, people lived their life. It was their life to lead although people acted like it wasnt. Oh I thought it was my life? Oh no, it belongs to him over there, yer father. He had two, you’ve got none.”

Kelman is adept at capturing that awkward period between adolescence and adulthood, Murdo straining sulkily for freedom but still tethered to childhood by filial loyalty and unarticulated love for his equally taciturn father. This is fertile ground for melodrama. But instead Kelman calmly goes about his work, allowing only ripples of grief to momentarily disturb a surface that the characters are trying so hard to keep calm.

“Ye were to talk but not talk. Not to talk but talk. That summed it up. Oh hullo yes it’s a nice day Mum’s got a tumour and she’s dying. That was the funeral too, people speaking to you but you werent to speak to them except Yes, I’m fine. Everything’s good, Mum’s in the coffin, bla bla bla.”  

This middle section of the novel is so powerful in its understated depiction of grief that it almost comes as something of a disappointment when Murdo actually does abscond from his Aunt and Uncle’s to meet up with Queen Monzee-ay at the music festival – an act that propels the narrative towards an ending that sits uneasily with what has gone before and could even be unkindly described as “Hollywood”.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence, then, that a movie adaptation of Dirt Road was already in production before the novel was even published. And while it is difficult to equate Kelman with such concerns of modern publishing as movie tie-ins and target audiences, one can’t help but wonder if Kelman has been slightly compromised by his publishers in producing a work that could quite easily be enjoyed by the burgeoning young adult market. In fact, what with its accessibility and relatively-low swear-count (as well as its reliably-brilliant prose) it is not difficult to imagine Dirt Road one day taking its place on the school syllabus alongside the like of The Catcher in the Rye and The Color Purple. But perhaps such cynicism is misplaced, and Kelman is simply following his artistic instincts in much the same way as his music-loving protagonist:

“Except the only thing: it was right what he was doing. He was not going with them. If he did that was him for the rest of his life. For everything. Although he was telling lies to do it, it was the right thing. So so right it was not even a decision. It fitted.”