A Working Class State of Mind
by Colin Burnett
“Telt in his ain Embra Scots, Colin’s chairacters’ lifes spairkle wi the language o thaim thit belang tae the toon.”
Written entirely in East coast Scots A Working Class State of Mind, the debut book by Colin Burnett, brings the everyday reality and language of life in Scotland to the surface.
Colin's fiction takes themes in the social sciences and animates them in vivid ethnographic portrayals of what it means to be working class in Scotland today.
Delving into the tragic exploits of Aldo as well as his long time suffering best friends Dougie and Craig, the book follows these and other characters as they make their way in a city more divided along class lines than ever before.
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"Sitting alongside works like Graeme Armstrong’s brilliantly evocative, The Young Team, and Ely Percy’s Duck Feet, A Working Class State of Mind adds to the range of exciting new writing hailing from Scotland’s proletarian roots. In this collection of shifting voices, wrapped in a powerful East Coast narrative, we are treated to a chilling yet entertaining history of Thatcher’s poverty-stricken children as they grow up in a state of deprivation and hopelessness in Leith."
Review by Loretta Mulholland on Into Creative
"The reader is already familiar with Aldo. Adlo is the ballast that makes most stories work; he appears as a wee skinny Asian kid with a kick-ass attitude. He’s a familiar figure in any working-class community. The hardman that takes nae shite. But he’s also funny, but not deliberately so. And he has a heart."
From Bella Caledonia - "Although in theory we live in a ‘meritocracy’ where anyone can make it in the arts – many cultural representations of working class people have gone beyond patronising and into full on sneering, especially reality TV shows that, in Chrissy’s words, “kin only be described as propaganda against the workin class.” And the idea of what it means to be a working class writer in twenty-first century Scotland is the focus of another story, ‘Sebastian the Great.’"
From The Midlothian Advertiser - "A Bonnyrigg author’s debut novel of short stories about local working class characters written in their native dialogue is proving popular all over the world." (FULL ARTICLE)
From SNACK magazine: "Colin Burnett’s debut short story collection introduces a new and vibrant to Scottish writing. What follows are tales fro success and failure often arrive hand in hand and coping mechanisms include pills, pubs piss taking. It does take time to adjust to Burnett’s Scots, but that is in no small part the point. Colin Burnett is not only demanding that his voice be heard, but that none should be silenced or denied. There is a call for cultural legitimacy, which lifts a working class state of mind to another level." SNACK Magazine August 2021.
Read a write up from Scottish Left Review: "They also display the fierce class loyalty that distinguishes James Kelman and this gives them an extra punch."
Published with support from the Scottish Language Publication Grant