CalPaperback, 22 August 2017

When it was first published, Bernard MacLaverty's masterpiece was hailed by Michael Gorra in the New York Times Book Review as a marvel of technical perfection...a most moving novel whose emotional impact is grounded in a complete avoidance of sentimentality...[It] will become the Passage to India of the Troubles." For Cal, a Northern Irish teenager who, against his will, is involved in the terrible war between Catholics and Protestants, some of the choices are devastatingly simple: he can work in the slaughterhouse that nauseates him or join the dole line; he can brood on his past or plan a future with the beautiful, widowed Marcella for whose grief he shares more than a little responsibility.