Very moving story of a judge in Ireland who is faced with very difficult decisions in his professional life in the precarious social shifts facing modern Ireland, decisions that divide his family. His haunting childhood memories have a stultifying impact on his adult life, perhaps rendering him silent in the face of emotional turmoil, and sadly unable to truly connect with his wife. Her death brings into focus his inadequacies as a parent. Sombre stuff relieved in part by wonderful descriptions of the southern Irish coast where he takes his holidays, where the cliffs are steadily falling into the sea, taking houses with them, a powerful metaphor.
Picador p/b with different cover, a great abstracted landscape by Marian Duchars.