Tam Docherty, pensive middle aged writer, returns from Grenoble to the Ayrshire town of  'Graithnock' for his brothers funeral.   He reflects over his life , focusing on the memorable summer of 1955, the summer of the kiln, when he worked in the local brickworks.   This was the summer between school days and university, between boyhood and manhood. McIlvanney captures Tam's adolescent identity struggle, his first encounters with women, and his first job with gritty realism.   Tam is the first in his family to go to university - providing a comparison between the working class life and the academic.   The breakdown of Tam's marriage to Gill provides relationship interest.  

A book which oozes with energy and course Scots humour.   It won the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award in 1996.