Robin Jenkins - maybe unfamiliar to many American readers - is one of Scotland's most humane and accessible writers. His novels explore the origins of human good and evil and "The Changeling" follows the tale of Tom Curdie, a young boy taken from the slums of inner-city Glasgow by his well-meaning middle-class English teacher. Mr Forbes takes the tough young Tom on afamily holiday away from teh city in an attempt to prove that nurture, not nature, is the dominant force in establishing both personality and morality. The text explores the dilemma faced by Tom as he struggles to work out whether he fits into this new effete world, or in the dark and violent, drink-sodden existence he has temporarily left. Mr Forbes, too, faces some hard thinking about his own ideas as it becomes increasingly obvious to him that his social experiment is by no means as clear cut as he thought.

As an introduction to the style and concerns of Jenkins you could not do better than "The Changeling". The author's highly visual description and philosophical approach to the format places him in the great European tradition of the novel rather than in the sometimes insular British tradition.

Read this book ... and once you've read it, try any other Jenkins novel. I suggest "The Conegatherers", "A Love of Innocence", "Fergus Lamont" and ... any others! These are distinctly Scottish novels, but their concerns are accessible world-wide.

Incidentally ... "Lighthouses and Ropes"? Read the novel and get the symbols!

I thought this was a very thought-provoking book. It had a serious side as well as several humorous touches. It gives a very real view of Glasgow/Scottish life, and an insight of a child growing in to a man. I couldn't put this book down!