Bucket of Tongues

by McLean, Duncan

• ISBN13: 9780393318975
• ISBN10: 0393318974
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-05-17
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

In this extraordinary collection of short stories, Duncan McLean shows us real life--and real death--in all its many guises. Equally adept at black farce, brutal rants, or tender epiphanies, McLean plunges us headlong into the lives of his characters: partying, and all it entails, with soccer maniacs; shivering inside the butcher's man-sized fridge; stumbling bloody-footed along the cliff-top path at midnight; liver'n'onions-fueled fantasies of sex and violence. The men and women in these stories are unemployed or in dead-end jobs, often on the edge of mandness or destruction. But just as often they are on the brink of simply leaving: walking away from relationships, responsibilities, and the reassurance of alcohol and aggression. Told with enormous skill, fierce humor, and a dark emotional drive, these stories display a merciless realism, and an almost fanatical adherence to the rhythms and cadences of spoken language. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Duncan McLean is the author of Bunker Man and Lane Star Swing, chosen as one of 1998's best books by the Los Angeles Times. Both are available from Norton. He lives in Orkney, Scotland.

Table of Contents

When God Comes and Gathers His Jewels	1	(18)
Cold Kebab Breakfast	19	(10)
A/deen Soccer Thugs Kill All Visiting Fans	29	(14)
The Big Man That Dropped Dead	43	(2)
The Doubles	45	(6)
After Guthrie's	51	(6)
New Year	57	(4)
Headnip	79	(26)
Bed of Thistles	87	(20)
Quality Control	107	(6)
Hours of Darkness	113	(42)
Three Nasty Stories	155	(18)
Thistle Story	173	(2)
Lurch	175	(8)
Dying and Being Alive	183	(4)
Loaves and Fishes, Nah	187	(10)
The Druids Shite It, Fail to Show	197	(22)
Shoebox	219	(10)
Jesus Fuckeroo	229	(2)
Tongue	231	(8)
Lucky to be Alive	239