"The squat mushroom-shaped shadow of the Martello tower had come to fall over the both of them as they talked. He felt himself once again suspended in aspic. A man trapped in a gelatinous prison of nationality, of duty, of sacrifice, of tradition, of whatever other lies people tell themselves to get in the way of their own happiness."Imagination, fantasy, myth and tragedy collide in this darkly-comic, intergenerational tale of Irish life.Four lives: Cian Mulligan, a student prone to wild flights of fantasy, whose personality bleeds into his writing; Oisín Murphy, a reserved boy trying to...