Old Bastards
Stevie Duffy
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Author: James Kelman
£16.95 Original price was: £16.95.£14.95Current price is: £14.95.
Kieron Smith, boy follows a young Glaswegian navigating childhood through family tensions, friendships and the move from close-knit tenements to a new housing scheme. Told entirely through Kieron’s distinctive voice, it captures everyday life with warmth and honesty. For readers of literary fiction about childhood, community and working-class Scotland.
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James Kelman’s Kieron Smith, boy took me straight into the confusion, excitement and occasional cruelty of childhood. Kieron grows up in post-war Glasgow, exploring rivers, shipyards and building sites while…
James Kelman’s Kieron Smith, boy took me straight into the confusion, excitement and occasional cruelty of childhood. Kieron grows up in post-war Glasgow, exploring rivers, shipyards and building sites while trying to understand family tensions, sectarian divisions and the rules adults impose without explanation.
I loved how completely Kelman commits to Kieron’s voice. His thoughts tumble across the page in Glaswegian speech, moving from games and daring climbs to fear, loneliness and questions he cannot properly express. As Kieron grows older, his language and understanding develop almost without you noticing.
There is no grand plot driving this novel. Its power lies in ordinary moments and in how enormous they feel to a child. Funny, tender and deeply perceptive, Kieron Smith, boy is one of the most convincing portraits of working-class Scottish childhood I have read.
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.
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The Dear Green Place
Archie Hind
£9.95