- This new novel from celebrated Irish author Sebastian Barry is perhaps the best and most absorbing novel I’ve read in a long time. His two previous novels were set in America, but in this one he comes home.
- Much of contemporary Irish fiction has a certain flavour to it. Authors, like Claire Keegan, confronting the awful legacy of child abuse committed by priests and nuns, and the church authorities who denied the seriousness of it and hid it all away - 'nothing to see here'. They also pressured the police chiefs to cease further investigations. Everyone was a loyal Catholic.
- There's a decidedly Irish lilt to Barry's prose, in its repetitive, circling, and mesmerising short sentences. His narrative often slides into another zone altogether, creeping up on you, shifting to a different time or a different place. There's a beautiful dreamlike texture to it.
- Tom Kettle, aged 66, a retired police detective, is living a simple life on Dalkey Island across the strait from Dublin. He’s soft and quiet by nature and very introspective. Mental clarity, however, is something he doesn’t have. As the novel proceeds we learn why. Tragedy has been a constant burden. He’s visited by two former junior colleagues and his old boss who are seeking his help on an unresolved case from a decade ago. A priest was found in a ravine with injuries suggesting he was stabbed and pushed down a mountain.
- We learn that Kettle's wife, an orphan, was constantly raped by this priest, and he himself, also an orphan, was constantly abused by a religious Brother. His police colleagues know this sad history. They ask him to submit to a DNA test. They know his anger at the priests and the senior police officers has always been fierce.
- There are a number of other characters, including his two children, in this beautiful, haunting novel that flesh out the whole very satisfactorily.
- One of Sebastian Barry's extraordinary gifts as a writer is his boundless capacity for empathy. (IRISH TIMES).
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