Bucket of Tongues Author:Duncan McLean From the author of Lone Star Swing, this winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, is "lean, maggoty writing. More: it's subversively funny" (Janice Galloway). 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... more », McLean plunges us headlong into the lives of his characters: partying, and all it entails, with soccer enthusiasts; shivering inside the butcher's man-sized fridge; stumbling bloody-footed along the cliff-top path at midnight, lost in a liver'n'onions-fueled fantasy of sex and violence. The men and women in these stories are mostly unemployed or in dead-end jobs, often on the edge of madness 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 are as various as the characters themselves. Their commonality derives from a merciless realism, and an almost fanatical adherence to the rhythms and cadences of spoken language.« less