Paul Kelly has escaped Rathbawn, his home town in Ireland, and is attempting to begin a new life managing a pub in Brixton. But, overwhelmed by his wife's death and the prospect of bringing up his daughter alone, his days have become a constant alcoholic binge. Then, through a drunken haze, he learns that his brother has been murdered and he must return to Ireland to confront his past and Rathbawn's dangerous ideas of revenge.

But all he is waiting for is the hour when the pubs open and he can get his healer . . .

'There's great sweetness at the heart of this dark, troubling book, a juxtaposition that suggests that Sweeney will go far' Christina Patterson, Observer

'This is a taut, sparse, darkly comic beast of a novel with iced water flowing through its veins . . . Long live Eamonn Sweeney' Joseph O'Connor, Sunday Independent

'Stabbing prose of breathless vernacular humour . . . an exciting, highly readable story' Tom Deveson, Sunday Times

'An exciting story of brave hearts and dark deeds in a world of pain leavened only by wit and love' Peter Cunningham, Irish Times

'This is a captivating and shocking first novel, in which linguistic inventiveness and the keenly observed characterization of places and people achieve a rare integrity' Emily Ormond, Guardian