When Janey Godley performed her stand-up show, based on her life as the wife of the son of a gangland-family in Glasgow's East End, on the Edinburgh Fringe, there was a whiff of condescension about the glowing notices she received from the (predominantly middle class) critics.

Here was a new voice to succeed Billy Connolly's vulgar shipyard stories now he's gone all posh, and she's talking with authority of the reality of life in Scotland's Style City. And she makes it funny. And she's a woman.

Anyone picking up her printed memoir having seen Godley live, should know that there is not a laugh on every page. Oh, it's wry and knowing enough to see the absurdity of some situations. You couldn't make up the valued support she received from her foul-mouthed food-and-nutrition teacher; the honeymoon spent watching Kramer vs Kramer in the picture-house, or the fact that her daughter, Ashley, owes her name to a manufacturer of electrical plug and socket hardware. But such observational reporting is the stock-in-trade of any raconteur, while, here, they simply add spice to a genuinely compelling and very brave narrative. It feels natural, too.
Initially, I worried that there were signs of ghost writing but, on reflection, those were simply evidence of clumsy editing.

Someone has insisted that Godley add explanations where they are unnecessary and some points worth a glancing mention are laboured through repetition, for example, the location of the heroin pusher's beat opposite the police station as well as the general mistrust of Strathclyde's finest. The sentence "The police were never called, violence was common place" occurs more than once.

At other times, Godley appears to be unintentionally funny. She introduces us to a minor character, Gordon, with the line "he was gay and therefore knew how to use soft furnishings" apparently without irony. There are also horrid lapses into Californian shrink-speak. Her sister and she decide that their father should share some of the "blame cake" for the sexual abuse they both suffered at the hands of an uncle when they were very young children. When that abuse is central to Godley's understanding of her own character, and therefore to the subject of the book, confectionery seems inappropriate.

In reality – and this book is nothing if not real: newspaper stories of the time litter its pages – Handstands In The Dark is a valuable contemporary addition to a vast and varied literature about the people of Glasgow that runs the gamut from Archie Hind to Margaret Thomson Davies.

I can't imagine what fans of MTD will think as they pick up Godley's book, but I really hope they do. They deserve the education and she deserves the sales. It is no exaggeration to identify this as a brave book. Many of the characters in its pages are still alive and probably still don't mess about. As middle class as any comedy critic myself (just save your writing), I was shocked by some of what I read but completely credulous because so many of its events run parallel with and accord with my own memory of the time. To cite a lighter example, here is the response to the pseudo-working class Scotia Bar Club, Workers' City, which dissed Glasgow's year as European City of Culture in 1990. In the real East End, members of Godley's circle were inspired to take part in community arts events, delighted in the rebirth of the Glasgow Fair on Glasgow Green and enjoyed the extended licensing hours – unless, like her, you were behind the bar, when you enjoyed the extra money.

All of this is, of course, just adds "colour" as newspaper editors say. The meat of Godley's autobiography is the story of a hard life populated by people who escape the grim reality of their lives through alcohol and drugs or who preserve their position or extend their power through extreme – and often fatal – violence. It is a story of sad, weak, and brutal men, and marginalised, abused and tortured women and you would be self-deluded to disbelieve it.

I began reading disappointed by its clumsiness in construction and glib assertions and dubious views. Either they disappear or you get used to them but Godley's narrative improves once she dispenses with the rose-tinted glasses she uses to view her childhood and deals with the confusion of her adult life. To be honest, as she is, you might not like her very much by the end but you will have been moved and you will be wiser. For me, the tale of the Calton community's entryism into the Cathcart Constituency Labour Party offered a bizarrely believable explanation for something I have never quite understood (page 182). But you may find your own personal gem of illumination.