BAD ATTITUDES

Two soporific novellas offer an insider’s view of working-class life in modern Scotland.

If these stories by Owens (A Working Mother, 1995) are a guide, the Scots’ reputation for coldness, parsimony, gloom, silence, and joylessness is richly deserved. The first (“Bad Attitudes”) takes place among housing-project residents in a small, dreary, and impoverished mill town whose outlines will be familiar to readers of James Kelman or Irvine Welsh. Mrs. Webb is an elderly pensioner with a lot of time on her hands, which she generously expends spying on her neighbors—especially a new family, the Dawsons, who’ve moved in upstairs. The Dawsons are not especially wild folk, but they do have two young sons, argue from time to time, and stay up later than sunset. As a result, they become the subject of a string of furious complaints filed by Mrs. Webb with the local housing council. In an attempt to stave off eviction, Mrs. Dawson begins sleeping with one of the local councilors and eventually leaves her family (whom she never much liked in the first place) altogether. Old gossip Mrs. Webb is delighted by this turn of events, but she hasn’t seen the half of it: Soon, the neighborhood becomes the site of a murder, a gypsy encampment, and a demolition. The councilor is exposed and refuses to resign, and Mrs. Dawson has to return to her husband because the waiting list for flats is very long. The second novella (“Jen’s Party”) depicts the arrangements made for young Jen Boulting’s 14th birthday party. Jen lives with her mother Maude and her aunt Belle, two sisters who are polar opposites in the Patty/Kathy Duke mold: Belle is an unemployed floozy who shoplifts, lies, and flirts her way out of any predicament, while Maude would make John Knox look like the life of party. Jen’s party itself turns out to be quite a surprise.

A kind of drawing-room comedy that isn’t very funny.