'For over thirty years, Eoin McNamee has been one of the outstanding writers of his generation' David Peace 'McNamee's books are intense and compressed, but so carefully worked that they read smoothly' The TimesFeaturing stories from the fringes, this collection explores the fates of ordinary people when survival is the only choice. In illuminated, radiant prose McNamee circles Irish coastal communities with a fisheye lens. In these stories we encounter kinship in unlikely places, addiction that is stripping and stark, and love that slices deep into the lesions of history. With criminal encounters in dorm rooms, the ghosts of young women lost to the untrusting tides and families torn apart by violence, McNamee is unrelenting in thrusting close the haunted stories of those enduring the trials of troubling history and dire circumstance - so that even when you want to you can't look away. In sharp, precise prose McNamee proves his stylistic authority over his characters and settings and reveals himself again as the master of contemporary Irish fiction.