A compelling literary novel about hidden family secrets. Patrick Jackson is dying, he knows that, and lying on his hospital bed in Derry he remembers things: like the death of an eight-year old girl called Christine Casey on a quiet road in Donegal. Her body was found on reclaimed land called the Inch Level on the shoreline of Lough Swilly. He remembers the effect of her death, and of earlier unspoken events, secrets only hinted at, on his deeply unhappy family. On his sister Margaret, for example, and her husband Robert, who no one in the family can bring themselves to like, and on his indomitable and unforgiving mother Sarah, and on the mysterious silent Cassie, who is part of the family but not of it. The history of this formidable clan, defended by so many emotional barriers and hidden obstacles, is gradually revealed in a novel of exquisite control and restraint. Set in and around the contested city of Derry over a period of fifty years, from the Second World War to the Troubles of the 1980s, Inch Level evokes the desolate and beautiful landscape of Ireland's north Atlantic coastline as the truth rises slowly to the surface.
