This Is the Country

Living on a notorious estate with a mother who has given up, a bright teenager heads for trouble: truanting, taking drugs and hovering on the fringes of the city's criminal underworld. But when he gets Pat The Baker's sister pregnant, his life changes irrevocably. This tense, moving novel sets power and corruption in present-day Ireland against the fragile defences of love, friendship and family. As gritty as it is tender, as humorous as it is dark, it tells a riveting tale of survival against the odds.