Kieron Smith, Boy

Our summary description

As Independent Scottish booksellers, we write all of our descriptions personally, we hope you enjoy this one.

In Glasgow, Kieron Smith finds comfort in the home of his much loved grandparents, where there is warmth, attention, and an endless supply of stories. At home, he is rejected by his brother and largely ignored by his parents, learning early how much a child can notice from the edges of a room.

When his family moves to a new housing scheme on the outskirts of the city, everything familiar is loosened. The close community of the tenements is replaced by a world Kieron does not yet know how to read, and he has to find his own way of adapting to a life that feels both larger and lonelier.

Kieron Smith, Boy follows an urban childhood in all its detail: its joys and injustices, battles and games, discoveries and uncertainties. Through Kieron’s eyes, boyhood becomes ordinary and strange at once, full of wonder, confusion, and the slow work of making sense.