Kieron Smith, Boy

July 21, 2008
Kieron Smith’s coming-of-age in a rough Glasgow neighborhood is grimly rendered by Kelman in this stark and affecting novel. The younger of two boys, Kieron is overlooked and seen as simple compared to his brother, Matt, the “smart one.” Kieron’s only safe haven is his grandparents’ house, where his grannie treats him as the favorite and his granda and uncle teach him to fight (Uncle Billy suggests Kieron use a brick against larger bullies). But when the family moves across town to a better neighborhood, Kieron falls in with a group of rowdy youth from his new primary school, including Mitch, an angry, abused child, and he takes to climbing drainpipes and scampering across rooftops as an outlet for his frustrations. As the years tick by, Kieron’s relationships with his family disintegrate (things with Matt get especially bad), and Kelman’s raw, blunt narration drives home all of Kieron’s loneliness, sadness and feelings of inadequacy. If you can roll with the Scots dialect, the narrative is rewarding, bleak and marvelous.

September 1, 2008
Set in late 1950s Glasgow, Kelman's latest (after "You Have To Be Careful in the Land of the Free") novel vividly portrays a boy's growing up from the boy's perspective. Kieron Smith lives in a rough, inner-city neighborhood with his seaman father, his mother, and his studious (and more favored) older brother. Taking him from ages five to 12, the events recounted are those of everyday lifeKieron moves to a new house on the edge of the city, his beloved grandfather dies, he graduates from elementary school to attend the same "posh" school as his brother. Kelman gets Kieron's voice just rightinnocent and profane by turns and always thick with the local dialect. While frank and powerful in its portrayal of working-class life and the inner consciousness of a young boy, the novel can be challenging reading owing to its overwhelming accretion of detail. It can seem strangely shapeless at times and about 100 pages too long. Nevertheless, there are numerous rewards for those who persist. Recommended for larger public libraries.Lawrence Rungren, Merrimack Valley Lib. Consortium, Andover, MA

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 15, 2008
Nothing much happens in Kelmans new novel, which is precisely the point. Kelman gets into the mind of his young protagonist so completely that it feels as if one is reading private thoughts in an unusually perceptive diaryso candid, so unaffected, and so free from artifice and pretense is it. Kieron Smith is a boy from Glasgow with concerns typical of his age, from early boyhood to early adolescence. Through his eyes we experience the death of a grandparent, the move to a new home, and his often tense relationship with a slightly older brother. He is naturally curious about the world, and neither life nor circumstances can change that. He wonders why things are as they are, even as the adults around him take most everything at face value. Some aspects of Kierons existence are unique to the Scottish Lowlands: his obsession about speaking properly outside the home and especially around his image-conscious mother, for instance, and the often testy Catholic-Protestant divide that looms large in his milieu. Otherwise, his story is a universal one of adjusting to new circumstances while trying to remain true to oneself. A known master at portraying the details of life in Scotland and capturing, pitch-perfectly, the dialogue of his characters, Kelman here brings the inner and outer lives of a likable, often misunderstood boy fully into focus.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)