These are powerful stories – gritty, memorable and ambitious. The novella goes straight to the heart, both in terms of its theme and its emotional punch

Edna O'Brien

Excellent – this is a powerful and moving collection

Roddy Doyle

Orwell would have been proud to journey with a writer as good as Colum McCann

Sunday Independent

McCann once again shows why he is one of the best writers in the world … Deeply moving and powerfully written, these are likely to become classics

Big Issue

Captures that peculiar nexus of hormones, deprivation and political imperative on a Northern Irish child coming of age

Los Angeles Times Book Review

Colum McCann's stories are brooding, meditative and lyrically controlled to that delicate point where the emotion within them intensifies with each succeeding reading and recognition. The political turmoil of Northern Ireland finds here an answering, subtly respondent voice - wonderfully skilled and deeply felt

Seamus Deane