The Young Team by Graeme Armstrong: Book Review

In the pantheon of great Scottish vernacular writers Graeme Armstrong has joined the podium. He stands alongside James Kelman, Irvine Welsh, Ely Percy and Anne Donovan.

Maybe he is the gold medalist, but let’s see what novel #2 brings.

My only criticism of this amazing book is it could have been edited a little more tightly.

That critique aside, in the meantime we have a belter in The Young Team which is an auto-fictional story of life in brutal, and I mean really brutal, gang culture in Airdrie and the surrounds (Coatbridge, Wishaw, Motherwell, Hamilton).

Whatever, they’re awe shite.

The Young team tells of Azzie’s life as a wannabe gang leader through the ranks, to…well, you’ll have to read it

The grit in this story is that Azzie has a brain. Trouble is he uses it infrequently as his gang-inspired rage too often rules his heart over his head.

At times you grit your teeth so hard you can barely breathe as this horrific story unfolds. It’s not quite Glasgow’s Jimmy Boyle-esque razor gangs, but it’s not far short.

Life in North Lanarkshire’s schemes is awful, although interestingly Armstrong rarely suggests that, it’s just life.

Aggro, violence, wine (Buckfast) drugs and motherly love are the soothing embraces that make this land home. No matter what.

The drugs (or is it the violence – there’s plenty of that) centre the book. Azzie is close to being a junkie, but he’s also close to being a murderer (OK, manslaughterer).

He’s smart, but he’s also mental.

I wouldn’t want to meet him (although I would love to meet Graeme Armstrong). We read of his life from wannabe gang master to sensible 22 year old retiree. But the needle still skips.

It’s, to be honest, terrifying. But it’s written with the mind of a philosopher.

Azzie can escape, unlike most.

This makes it sound like a cliche but it’s anything but. Ignore comparisons to Trainspotting. That’s lazy and predictable. This is a far more serious, and more important, book.

“It’s shite being Scottish”, yes it is – in this den of iniquity.

The stories of rave culture add a bit of levity (but even these are horrifying in places). I wasn’t one of them (thankfully reading this) but levity is not a tonal reference of this book.

Many say it is funny like Irvine Welsh. (It isn’t). OK, it has funny moments. But it isn’t a comedy book by any stretch of the imagination. It’s much more Alan Warner than Irving Welsh in this respect.

So, don’t buy this for a laugh.

Buy it to , I dunno, I’m so middle class that I don’t want to say/admit it – feel better about your life?

Actually, naw, just revel in Graeme Armstrong’s writing skills.

It’s a belter. And it’s coming to a TV near you soon so get it read first.

And Away by Bob Mortimer: Book Review

The ultimate curate’s egg of a book.

I love Bob. The clown prince of comedy.

His latter career has actually escalated him to a higher status than Vic Reeves (Gone Fishing and Atletico Mince), but oddly the latter stage of the aforementioned is the most uninteresting part of this, in places, great book.

The first act, his childhood and early career is by far the most successful section of the book as he recounts his slow clamber out of painful shyness that cripples his ambitions. Once succesful, and telling the story we know, he tries too hard to write his way though it rather than simply storytelling. It exposes his weaknesses as a writer pretty badly.

Early on, his similes are laugh out loud funny, but they dry up. The real strength is his descriptions of laddishness and naivety that populate his early years.

The shyness he experiences feels a little laid on too thickly for me, but when he concludes the book he comes back to it and urges readers to overcome their own feelings of inadequacy, so maybe it is for real.

Either way it lurches from laugh out loud funny (the shoe waterfall) to banal.

I doubt I could cope with his novel which I fear would suffer from trying to be funny rather than naturally being so.