Description "O'Neill is in the same fine league as another Irishman with colonial ties, J G Farrell - exciting and dangerous, with a touch of the poet." Sunday Times
"An uncannily and exacting and accomplished novelist." The Observer
It is 1928, and the Bennett family have been merchants in Limerick for more than a century. The gaslit streets of the city have been haunted by secterian tensions. Many Protestant families have fled to England, the north of Ireland and the colonies. But the Bennetts and others have remained.
There is a new army, a new police force, a new breed of cleric: none of them are without bias. Swingeing academics spare neither class nor creed, and sorrow is inflicted on rich and poor alike. It is a time of conflict, but a time also of hope and reconstruction, and triumph over adversity.
"A strictly modern and undeluded vision of the past. The writing is shockingly credible." Times Literary Supplement
"O'Neill is . . . exciting and dangerous with a touch of the poet." The Sunday Times
Author J. M. O'Neill was born in Limerick, where his father was the city's postmaster, and educated at the Augustinian College, Dungarvan, County Waterford.
His plays include Now You See Him, Now You Don't, Diehards, and God Is Dead on the Ball's Pond Road. His first novels, Open Cut (1986) and Duffy Is Dead (1987) were hailed as truly original works, earning him the accolade of being "the laureate of the London Irish".
These first two novels were followed by Canon Bang Bang (1989) and Commissar Connell (1992). He moved to live in Kilkee, County Clare, where he completed his two last novels, Bennett & Company (1998) and Rellighan, Undertaker (1999).
"A hard and squalid world depicted economically and evocatively . . . the tension in the slang-spotted dialogue and the mean prose creates effective atmosphere." Hampstead & Highgate Express
