Inspector Martin Aitken's life is in chaos. The Assistant Commissioner wants him out of his job, terrible things are growing inside his house, and his ex-wife likes talking to famous dead people. Forty-three years old, he still can't knot a tie. But when a strange woman collapses on a Christmas Eve Dublin street, Aitken's world is about to be turned on its head.
Milton Amery is a New York plastic surgeon. Wealthy, successful, he is nevertheless plagued by anxiety, the kind of man who feels nervous buying trousers. His marriage is in turmoil, his teenage son communicates only in vowel sounds, a guitar-strumming anarchist with a Mao Tse Tung tattoo is having sex with his only daughter.
Ellen Connolly is a woman with a mission, to come to Ireland and find her birth mother, to put together pieces of her past. Time is running out fast for Ellen. A small town in beautiful Inishowen contains the secrets than can unlock her heart.
Joseph O'Connor's wildly comic and deeply moving new novel is a story of love found late, of hidden connections, of a journey that changes three lives forever.
