Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

Javascotia

Rate this book
Book by Obler, Benjamin

416 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2009

Loading interface...
Loading interface...

About the author

Benjamin Obler

6 books9 followers
I teach fiction at Gotham Writer's Workshop in New York City.

My first novel, Javascotia, came out from Penguin Books UK in 2009. In 2015 my story "The White Man's Incredulity Furrows His Brow" won the short fiction contest with the journal PUERTO DEL SOL. In 2016, I published essays with the Guardian, LongReads, Electric Literature, and The Times (of London) magazine.

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
7 (26%)
4 stars
9 (34%)
3 stars
4 (15%)
2 stars
2 (7%)
1 star
4 (15%)
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
Profile Image for Alison Smith.
843 reviews20 followers
July 20, 2016
Very little action - too much belabouring of the cultural differences between USA & Scotland - oh come on! what did he expect? a dismally slow pace. I abandoned the book.
Profile Image for David Hebblethwaite.
345 reviews240 followers
December 10, 2010
It’s 1994, and Mel Podgorski – still in his early twenties, with a failed marriage behind him, and a year spent in the doldrums – gets another chance to make something of himself. He lands a job as a market researcher working on behalf of a large coffee chain, and is sent across the Atlantic to Glasgow, to scope out the competition. Whilst there, Mel finds himself falling for an art student named Nicole Marston – and gets caught up in the group of anti-motorway protestors to which she belongs.

Javascotia is one of those frustrating reads which is never quite as good as one senses it could be. Benjamin Obler has a flowing prose style, tending towards lengthy expression, but only rarely in a way that outstays its welcome. However, some aspects of Mel’s first-person narration are more problematic: for example, he’ll note the differences in language (“[...]most of the listings were bedsits – in American English, studios or efficiencies – and the section of the paper was headed adverts”, p. 39); which is fine at the beginning, to show that Mel is still finding his feet – but he’s still making such remarks towards the end of the novel, when the technique is redundant and can be pretty irritating. I’m also not sure that the novel’s structure serves it all that well – Mel’s life in the US is dealt with mainly in one long section (over a hundred pages) in the middle, which I found to really disrupt the momentum built up in the earlier part of the book.

There is an interesting theme running through Javascotia, though, which I’d characterise as exploring the gap between impression and reality. It’s there in the way that Scotland doesn’t live up to its tourist-brochure image for the American characters (Mel isn’t the only scout we meet), and the way that Glasgow’s coffee outlets aren’t as Mel imagines them to be. It’s there in the way that Mel is shown not to have known his wife (and, indeed, his parents) in the way he thought he did. And it’s there in a nicely rueful ending.

There’s an interesting story told in Javascotia, but the way it is told doesn’t quite do it justice.
Profile Image for Mick Bordet.
Author 9 books4 followers
September 19, 2023
I bought this book for my wife, who is an avid coffee drinker and lover of all things Scottish. She gave up after two chapters. I held onto the book, as the back page blurb sounded full of promise and now, five or six years later, I have finally got around to reading it and fully understand why she gave up when she did. I am a little more stubborn when it comes to finishing books, so ploughed on, but with little hope.
The problem with those first chapters is that they are set primarily in the USA and provide a lot of background about the main character and his family, which is not irrelevant but could be better placed throughout the following chapters. When he does finally get to Glasgow and interacts with the locals a bit, things finally come to life. A little.
I felt that the author managed to get some of the charm of Scots and specifically Glaswegian slang, avoiding coming across like an episode of Parliamo Glasgow, though there is a LOT of 'translation' that spoils the flow at times. A glossary or footnotes would have helped here, I think. There are some minor geographical and timeline errors, but these come across as mis-remembered facts, rather than just being poorly researched, and strange linguistic choices like dropping the "Street" or "Road" from streetnames, which actually reinforces the fish-out-of-water view he has.
The end of the story is fairly cathartic and several characters come out the other end having learnt something, though some others deserved better. Unfotunately, we had to get through far too many chapters of road-trip exposition set in the US to get there.
As for the main character, well, he's a mess. "Somehow" he manages to get a job that caters perfectly to his deep love for coffee, despite any relevant experience beyond his caffieine intake, but he is pretty obnoxious in his disdain for Scottish culture and its resistance to the lure of 'finer' coffee. I'm not saying it was easy to get a good cup of coffee in the early 90's in Glasgow, but it wasn't as hard as he makes out and I have memories of several American TV shows and movies where characters regularly complained about the coffee.
So what kept me reading to the end? Probably the flavour the book gives of Glasgow in the early 90s, away from the City of Culture glamour, a time in my life when I spend years in the West End, the East End and the Southside of the city. It was a bit of time travel, a bit of familiar banter from my own past.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Monita Gangavarapu.
14 reviews1 follower
September 27, 2021
This story is not ageing well, if it was ever acceptable at all.

It doesn't take long to realise the main character is an a*hole, but I honestly don't think the author intended him to be this way. Huge creeper vibes from the very first girl he meets and by page 37 she should have booted him out of the cab and moved on with her life, but she invites him for drinks. It reads like a male fantasy written by a high school kid with a large vocabulary and some travel experience. I felt too sick about it to continue - the author should have engaged more female editors.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.