Dermot Healy: 4 books

From “Ireland’s finest living novelist” (Roddy Doyle)—a funny, moving, exquisitely written novel about a community on the cusp of change Acclaimed Irish author Dermot Healy’s first novel in more than ten years is a rich, beguiling, and wonderfully funny story about community, family,...

A funny, direct, lively and moving account of growing up in small-town Ireland. Healy lovingly coaxes his childhood into being until, one day, his elderly mother hands him the coded diary he kept as a teenage tearaway and the uncut past burst in like a blast of raw air.

Ollie Wing is barely surviving. Back home in Sligo, he collects trolleys in a supermarket car park and lives in a run-down house with a group of art students. He can't escape what has happened in London and is tormented by old fears and regrets. Finally, he decides to confront his demons.

In a wind-battered Mayo cottage, playwright Jack Ferris tries to salvage something from his broken love affair with Catherine Adams. Drink and despair drove her away; can his imagination call her back? But as he summons up her past, Jack finds he has also called up Catherine's RUC father and a whole dangerous world of opposed traditions.