Channeling Woody Allen

James Kelman has created a wonderful, soon to be adult street thug in Kieron Smith, boy.  Imagine a Scottish pre-teen boy fighting, playing, and evading in the streets and schools of Glasgow while channeling Woody Allen in a Scottish street dialect.  You learn more about the frenzied twists and turns of a boy’s mind than you knew or recall existed.  It is all charming but there is a problem.  The book runs for 422 pages when 180 would have made a great book.  Too much of a good thing.  Charles Marlin

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