Eamonn Sweeney

This is an amazing book. I didn’t know what to expect when I started it. Would it be a depressing book about alcoholism and despair? Would it be, I soon wondered, a crime novel?

It's not so easy to categorise as all that. It is a story of a man who is addicted to alcohol, who is deeply caring with his young daughter, who years before left Ireland under a cloud and made a new life for himself. He is called back to Ireland when his brother is murdered. It is very hard for him, so long cut off from his family, to go there again. But he does go, and takes his little girl with him to meet her extended family for the first time.

I'll give no more of the plot away than that, but I will say is that this is a beautifully written story of people who are normally two dimensional in other novels, and here are allowed to come alive. It is thoughtful, and curseful, and unpredictable. Don’t expect it to be all sweetness, though, from my affection for it. It is at times very hard to read. Publisher's Weekly called it a "slam-tough, shocking novel." I'm just saying there is beauty and respect there as well.

One of my favourite novels, now.… (más)