A brilliantly inventive and witty novel about legacy and birthright from Kathleen Murray, Ireland’s brightest new literary voice.Frank Whelan is the seventh son of a seventh son, so by now should have inherited his father’s legendary healing power, but still hasn’t managed to graduate beyond small-time skin afflictions.He already feels adrift when his twin, Bernie, reveals a life-changing decision that calls into question everything Frank thought he knew about his place in ...

Willie Ryan returns to his home town in 'the great central plain of Ireland' after escaping from the asylum where he was committed, and unvisited, by his devout Catholic family for twenty-five years. The pretext for his incarceration was an attack on his sister-in-law; the real reason, an affair with a hedonistic young man who introduced him to art, literature and music. In this exposé of the 'petty bourgeois snobbishness, hypocrisies and pretensions' of the 'little grocer's republic' of 1...