Paper Cup

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While I commend the author for shining a light on homelessness and centring the book on Kelly, a homeless woman with addiction and mental health issues, I found it agonisingly slow-paced and lacking in character development. The biggest convenience of all is that the wedding just happens to be in the same town where Kelly grew up. As someone who has previously lived in Glasgow and who worked with homeless individuals in the city, I was immediately drawn to this book for obvious reasons. The idea that you could choose to look at things from another perspective – to look through the glass from the other side and find empathy and truth there – seems to me liberating and empathetic.

The great Scottish poet Robert Burns is referenced once, and once only, in Karen Campbell’s wonderful, empathetic, timely and moving new novel Paper Cup. In high sprits, the girls “take pity” on the tramp lying there, and gift her the coins they’d collected for strangers to kiss the bride to be.

A set of circumstances pushes Kelly to set off on a mission, of sorts, which sees her follow a pilgrimage trail in the South West of Scotland, setting out from her usual Glasgow spots. Overall, Paper Cup is an astute, touching, compelling tale by Campbell that does a beautiful job of reminding us that family is not always those just related by blood but rather those who love, care, support, and accept us. And anyone who lives here will recognise the retired army man whose “Land Rover was strident with Brittania: two union Jacks on the bumper and a Help for Heroes sticker on the window”. Gave great insight into the challenges of homelessness, the support systems and frustrations within it.

On this page, you’ve got the main aim briefly written followed by a very short equipment list and a step by step guide of how to go organise the activity.

It is a story of how life can give you a massive bag full of lemons and how you can pick yourself up, dust yourself off, find the beautiful things in life and find happiness in the small things in a journey that brings you back to knowing who you are and what things are truely important. Not only is it exquisitely written - and I mean catch-your-breath exquisite - the story is so real and told with such grace and compassion. That is not to say that it does not deal with the darker aspects of life – addiction, homelessness and failed relationships, but it also deals with hope.

Pished and gallus, and to her father’s embarrassment, she shouts: “Rabbie Burns was a filthy auld shagger!Along the way we meet people from very different walks of life… all of whom we judge on the initial meeting just in the same way we would judge Kelly. If there are moments when some may find the novel and its message a bit sentimental, more readers are surely likely to find pleasure and satisfaction in the humanity of Campbell’s treatment of people who have led difficult lives.

It is quite simply a beautiful, moving story that will stay with you long after you close the pages. Kelly is already on a downward spiral that will wreck her health and damage her relationships, but the Burns Supper scene got me thinking. While Kelly hitchhikes and walks around Scotland, a journalist is also seeking HER out, following a seeming act of bravery on the part of the Homeless Heroine.Let’s not judge so quickly, let’s humanise those who are struggling and let’s not just turn a blind eye. The way some of the characters treat Kelly is unfortunately all too common for people experiencing homelessness and having the last vestiges of their dignity torn away by people's cruelty. We’ve seen her, or him, sitting outside on the pavement with their paper cup, asking for nothing but 20p and possibly a sandwich. The posh divorcee who feeds Kelly (and her dog) on her pilgrimage seems almost offended when asked why she did it. Campbell gambles on our empathy when she shows Kelly at her worst, and she wins because she has written, without judgment or criticism, an original and memorable protagonist; one who moves through a landscape described with love and care, and whose interior voice will continue to ring in the reader’s head even after the long journey’s end is reached.