24 hours inside the mind of Helen, pretty much stream of consciousness. Helen is a croupier working nights at a London West End casino. She has a 6 year old daughter Sophie, is divorced from Sophie's father and lives with her boyfriend Mo in a tiny flat in south London.
On this day Helen is on her way home from her shift in a taxi when she is startled by the sight of a pair of homeless men walking in front of them. He seems to be Helen's brother Brian, lost to her years earlier when he walked out of their Glasgow home after a fight with their father. Unable to rest as she so desperately needs to do she is sat in the kitchen as Mo and Sophie wake, startling her from her reverie on old family photographs. As they begin their day Helen retreats to bed waking as Sophie's school day ends and Mo prepares to go to work as a waiter.
Kelman brilliantly evokes the fractured sense of a life of drugery, Helen is never rested enough or present enough to be a parent to Sophie and the shadow of her own past, unloved by her mother, abandoned by her beloved brother, negatively affects her judgement of Sophie's actions and innocence.
It is so noisy in Helen's head, things unspoken, sentences half spoken making the reader wonder and speculate. Helen worries incessantly and conversely talks herself into not acting on the things her instinct warns her are not right.
This was a book that returned to my mind over and over, the sad bleakness of Helen's life living the twilight world of a nightshift worker fighting to make ends meet, not a comfortable book but a brilliantly written one.
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