Bucket of Tongues, by Duncan McLean

Norton, 245 pages, $13

Reading Bucket of Tongues is like listening to an intelligent experimental-rock album: it takes a while to get used to, but it soon becomes addictive. Set in the low-income areas of Scotland's cities and in its isolated coastal villages, the 23 stories in this collection offer snapshots of the lives of young men and women scraping out existences at dead-end jobs or slowly stagnating on the dole.

The power of McLean's prose lies in the banal, life-like way he allows his stories to unfold: their placid surfaces mask violent undercurrents. This restraint gives the stories a quiet, unsettling strength: like an observer of a fragment of a quarrel, the reader has to piece together the meaning of the story and guess what's happened.

In "A/deen Soccer Thugs Kill All Visiting Fans," two brothers -- the younger a soccer hooligan on his way to a pre-game rumble, the older a worker just returned from a stint on an oil-drilling rig -- meet for coffee. As they discuss soccer, clothes, and women, their anxieties slowly surface and create a palpable tension: the younger brother is achingly self-conscious and desires to be like his older brother, who in turn envies his sibling's freedom and feels trapped and isolated by his job. The story ends with the two parting company, each locked in his separate fate: one is headed for a possibly lethal knife fight, and one is holding the hand of a girlfriend whom he rarely sees and barely trusts.

Leavening the quiet frustration that pervades much of the collection are some comic gems. In "Quality Control," a young man is hired by the proprietor of a sweatshop to check the factory's skateboards. Unfortunately for the young man's career aspirations, the skateboards are inferior and the owner is more interested in the safety of his pocketbook than in the safety of his customers:

As Mr. Ghopal approached, Gary Innes placed the board on the bricks, stepped onto it, and the board broke in two.

Damn and blast! said Mr. Ghopal. A bloody dud!

Gary Innes said nothing, but picked up the pieces and threw them away to the far side, on top of a heap of about fifty broken boards.

Oh my God, what have you done? shouted Mr. Ghopal.

Aye, there's been quite a few failures, said Gary Innes.

Quite a few! said Mr. Ghopal. How many cartons have you filled with good ones exactly?

Four, said Gary Innes.

Ah, so you've packed four boxes have you? said Mr. Ghopal, slightly less loudly.

Eh, no, said Gary Innes, I've packed the four good boards into that box there. All the rest, eh, failed quality control. . . .

You're fired, said Mr. Ghopal.

McLean's careful observation of emotional and physical details, his distanced narration, and his intermittent sly humor combine to create layered, thought-provoking stories that act as a temporary passport to another, not entirely pleasant, part of the world. By the time you finish the book, you'll want to read the stories again to capture what you missed the first time around.

--Nicholas Patterson