The opening story in James Kelman's 1998 collection, The Good Times, is called 'Joe Laughed'. It's nine pages long and is told from the point of view of a boy who plays football on a patch of waste ground among derelict industrial buildings by the river in a large, unnamed city which British readers are bound to assume is Glasgow. You don't find out the boy's name, or his age, although hints and the boy's style of reflection encourage you to guess he's between 14 and 16. At half-time, the boy and two friends start exploring an abandoned factory. After a bit, the boy's friends hit him and run away laughing. The boy's pride is hurt badly enough for him to decide he's never going to play football again, and for a moment he seems about to take a dangerous step out onto the factory roof, just to prove he can. At the end of the story he's left raging, alone, and perhaps - only perhaps, because for Kelman resolutions can only happen outside novels, if at all - on the cusp of great change, when he might lose football and his very life, he might walk away from what's left of childhood, or he might go back to the game.

LRB 22 May 2008 | PDF Download