Paper Cup by Karen Campbell

Canongate, 2022, 334 p.

I was inspired to read this book by a very complimentary review it received in The Guardian several months ago. Having now done so I can only concur with that assessment. Campbell writes very well. There are no undue frills to her prose – perhaps as a result of her history as an author of crime novels – but she communicates effectively and insightfully.

The protagonist is Kelly, a woman very down on her luck and with an acute alcohol dependency problem. She is stumbled on in George Square, Glasgow, by an inebriated hen party (in my young day that sort of enterprise was known as a bottlin’ – not a word I ever expected to write in a review.) The bride-to-be takes pity on Kelly and hands her the bag of pound coins she had collected in return for granting a kiss to each man the party had encountered that night. The future bride also inadvertently leaves behind her engagement ring, which Kelly picks up along with the information the bride is from Gatehouse (of Fleet,) a location Kelly knows well as she was brought up in (relatively) nearby Kircudbright. A bag of money not being the thing to donate to an alcoholic, Kelly of course buys drink with it.

The next day Kelly witnesses a gruesome bus accident in Royal Exchange Square where several people are injured. She uses her coat – manky though it was – to try to stanch the bleeding of a man who had all but ignored her on the steps of the Gallery of Modern Art, quitting the scene before the authorities arrive.

At the drop-in centre which he runs Kelly relates her experiences to Dexy, who has a soft spot for her, before she decides to leave Glasgow at least for a while, accepting a lift south from lorry-driver Craig, and maybe try to return the engagement ring. On the journey, Kelly’s thoughtfulness is revealed through her conversation with Craig. But she is still skittish and does not want to rely on others, alighting at Portpatrick where she spends the night in a disused lighthouse with Critall windows. An encounter with a group of US religious types plying her with leaflets gives her the idea of following the Pilgrim Trail through Galloway. The locations she passes through – Glenluce Abbey, St Ninian’s Cave, the Isle of Whithorn, Wigtown – were all made more redolent for me by the fact I have visited them. (As indeed I have Gatehouse and Kircudbright.) On the way she rescues from a barn a mistreated puppy she calls Collie(-flower) which becomes her bosom companion.

In her absence Kelly has become a minor heroine in Glasgow due to journalist Jennifer Patience publishing her act of compassion, identifying her from a photo taken after the accident when Kelly was coming to the man’s aid. This leads to her occasionally being recognised by minor characters whose interest in her she believes is occasioned by her taking Collie from its owner.

The book is not quite entirely seen from Kelly’s angle. Jennifer, Craig and Dexy all have a few passages related from their viewpoints. However, this is Kelly’s story, the salient points of Kelly’s life recalled by her in italicised passages relating her childhood closeness to her sister Amanda, her journey into alcoholism (with few sober interludes) and the trigger for her descent, a drunken mistake which led to her imprisonment for two years. The travails of being part of the benefits system, the series of Catches-22 which she endured, the all-but impossibility of getting out of the traps of joblessness and homelessness are starkly laid out by Campbell.

This might have been a bleak novel but Campbell’s insight into Kelly’s situation, her illumination of Kelly’s humanity, lift it out of thoughts of despair. The cruelties of her world are also lessened by Kelly’s fortitude (despite her lapses,) her caring for Collie, her determination to return the ring and the frequent kindness of strangers.

If the book has a weakness it is perhaps the dénouement, where reconciliation and redemption are possibly achieved a little too easily. As an account of a life on the margins, though, it is excellent.

Pedant’s corner:- “A skein of oncoming motorbikes blare past” (a skein … blares past.) Midgies (Midges,) “staining the glass with colour though it is clear” (implies coloured glass isn’t clear. If you can see through it, the it is clear – whatever colour it is,) Darren Carruthers’ (Carruthers’s.) “‘It’s a wee big snug’” (a wee bit snug,) “the Ettrick Shepherd” (usually the Shepherd bit is capitalised too,) “a row of small cups and saucers line a shelf” (a row … lines a shelf,) “a slab of cod, crisp and golden” (cod? In a Scottish chippie? Haddock is the usual fare,) “she has no clue where, or what time, or where” ( don’t know why where is repeated,) a missing end quote mark when a piece of dialogue is interrupted by description (x 1,) crenulations (crennellations.)

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