In just over 200 pages of interior monologue, spanning a 24-hour day, it leads us deep into the life of Helen, a young Scottish woman living in south London with her daughter and her Asian boyfriend Mo, and working as a dealer in a casino. Plunged into a long night and day of contemplation and memory by a fleeting glimpse of a homeless man who may or may not be her long-lost brother Brian, Helen sees herself as an entirely ordinary young woman.
Yet through the rich pattern of Kelman's prose, we come to recognise the extraordinary range of thought, memory, observation, empathy, questioning, hope and fear that makes up the inner world of every human life, and the raging, astonishing complexity. of the post-modern urban landscape Helen inhabits.
Mo Said She Was Quirky is a true work of art, full of surface simplicity and deep beauty; and informed by a profound compassion for all things human, imperfect, yet unique.