The Smiling School for Calvinists is tremendous. Set in Dundee and offering a tour of the city's people through anecdote and social insight, the Smiling School is brilliantly moving and mirthful in equal measure. Characters dredged up from the Dundee environment, the affinity with the sea, the high rise flats, the local pubs and school, all tell stories just as if sat nearby in the tavern.

Each chapter is a story told by a different character and most speak with slightly different accents. At times it is a little hard to follow the internal consistency of some of the accents as the subtle differences between speakers is subjugated to the broader distinction between writing in Standard English and Scots English. The Scots is where most of the humour flows from and some of the misfortunes and mis-perspectives of the speakers are intentionally hilarious.

When I first picked up the book and found the first character to be speaking in broad Scots about a folk hero named Rab I found myself remembering the fare of Rab C. Nesbitt - it would perhaps have been more effective for Boat Rab not to have been the first named person but as soon as he was out of the way the brilliance of the book shined through.

I could not stop myself from giggling on my morning commute to some of the tales including of Big Sheila bursting into the wrong house and the superbly captured bragging of the know-it-all with the Universal Zapper. Still, the Smiling School does not shy away from serious issues - taking issues such as alcoholism and depression head on. The disturbing descent of The Gravedigger and the character in The Fall point towards the understanding that Duncan has of his people.

It is in the tale of The Gravedigger that The Smiling School for Calvinists gets it's only mention and it is in light of that character's morbid depression and deliberate isolation - there are bleak tales here that mirror some of the gloomier elements of scottish mental health.

Structurally this book is exceptionally well put together. Speakers are differentiated not only into broad distinctions of Standard and Scots English speakers but also in how the format of the page is laid out. The excitable and passionate Scots speakers typically provide a verse of text unbroken by paragraphs. This highlights their earnest desire to get the story across and includes all the asides and mannerisms of speech expertly. The occasional interceding of real world (mostly spoofed) events and activities such as a superb spoof advert for a darkness box or news clippings that shake some of the reality of the situation the characters face break up the flow magnificently.

This is social commentary as told through the the voices of those who could be there. It is a trumphant exposition of the people and the place, it is laugh out loud funny and bitterly morbid, it is a credit to Bill Duncan and to Dundee. ( )