In Boyhood, David Keenan’s sprawling seventh novel, a young boy is abducted outside a football ground, sending the first ripple across a metaphysical sea, from World War II to 1980s Glasgow. Loosely based on anabasis (Greek for an ascent or journey), multiple histories and story arcs intertwine, drawing on a whole ecosystem of characters and a constellation of ideas. The risk of this expedition is becoming lost in the information overload.

The relentless flex of Keenan’s maximalist style, which drew some criticism for his previous novel Monument Maker, demands to be experienced rather than passively read. Huge, monolithic slabs of text, with barely a full stop in sight, give way to shorter bursts spat out like tracer fire. The result is exhilarating and overwhelming in equal measure. Guardian angels, ritualistic murder and talking horses are just a few of the gems in Keenan’s kaleidoscopic imagination: think Irvine Welsh relaying the plot of Cloud Atlas to William S Burroughs while both trip balls on DMT.

How well this hangs together depends on the reader’s power of recall. When Keenan’s dander is up (spoiler: all the time), he deploys imagery that provokes hilarity, disgust and pure wonder, sometimes at the story’s expense. That said, when one strand of the book’s web of plotlines bleeds into another, it feels like scoring a direct hit in Battleships; a bright flash of connection in a deluge of history, mythology and Glaswegian surrealism.

Cutting a clear route through the sensory jungle is Keenan’s love for his home city, soaked into every page. Anyone with a Gen X sensibility will revel in his descriptions of the rough-and-tumble of those streets and the wild energy of late 80s culture. Boyhood might fail to marshal its dizzying ambition into a cohesive final quarter, but its author would say the journey matters more than the destination.

Boyhood is published by White Rabbit on Thursday 9 April; main picture: Marzena Pogorzaly.

Related articles

• Irvine Welsh: In his own words
• Interview: Cloud Atlas author David Mitchell on Twitter, mid-life crises and new novel The Bone Clocks
• First Writes: Abigail Abbas