Boyhood is the most ambitious, commercial and exactingly plotted novel of Keenan's career, bringing together obsessions and strands from all the earlier novels to present a magical portrait of Glasgow and what it was like growing up there, in all of its dangerous and beautiful possibilities, while telescoping out in time and space to present a grand composite picture of the twentieth century as the various parallel strands of boys growing up and entering manhood come together in surprising and unexpected ways in a great orchestral vision.