A writer recalls the formative summer of his teenage years: it has the potential to be a pain in the neck, and the obsessively slow opening section of this novel is just that, with its emphasis on the flashier aspects of flashback; but once it gets going, The Kiln turns out to be a hilarious, moving and incredibly articulate book.
Mcllvanney - who has made a name for himself as the author of some upmarket crime fiction - is at his best on the nitty-gritty details of Scottish life, and this "memoir" is so realistic you desperately want it to be real. Maybe it is, too: the scene near the end in which the narrator's uneducated, unassuming, working-class father sends his son the Greek and Latin scholar off to university carries a charge so strong you feel that if you haven't lived through it, you should have.
