Kieron Smith, boy

"JAMES KELMAN POSSESSES AN ASTONISHING VOICE." Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World

James Kelman's triumph in Kieron Smith, boy is to bring us inside the head of a child and remind us what strange and beautiful things happen there.

This is the story of a boyhood in a large industrial city during the time of great social change. Kieron Smith grows from age five to early adolescence amid the general trauma of everyday life the death of a beloved grandparent, the move to a new home. A whole world is brilliantly realized: sectarian football matches; ferryboats on the river; climbing drainpipes, trees, roofs; street battles, dogs, and cats; sex, ghosts, and other spiritual beings.

A masterpiece.

The Washington Post - Peter Behrens

James Kelman's splendid evocation of childhood in mid-20th-century Glasgow…This funny, sad and deeply entrancing novel works as dreams do: by seduction, by raising strange spirits, and by delivering a world entire. It represents a triumph for Kelman, as hard and uproarious as a Glasgow Saturday night.

JAMES KELMAN is the author of a number of novels and collections of short stories, including Busted Scotch; Greyhound for Breakfast; A Disaffection, awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; How late it was, how late, winner of the Booker Prize; and, most recently, You Have to Be Careful in the Land of the Free. He lives in Glasgow.