First edition. 8vo. Pp. [vi], 355. Black cloth, lettered in gilt to spine; navy-blue endpapers. Jacket photo by Roger Mayne.
Signed by Author to title page.
His fourth novel. Shortlisted for the 2001 Saltire Scottish Book of the Year. A coming-of-age story of a northern Irish lad getting out from under the thumb of mother, church, and country.
MacLaverty's previous novel, Grace Notes, was shortlisted for the 1997 Booker Prize, while his 1983 novel, Cal, was turned into a film, based on his own screenplay, with Helen Mirren and John Lynch, for which Mark Knopfler composed the soundtrack.
"Exceptionally skilled at entering into the lives of the lonely or impaired, [MacLaverty] depicts unfulfilment with an authenticity unmatched in Irish fiction since James Joyce's Dubliners." –The Sunday Times