Life
Author of The Healing (Jonathan Cape 1992), the story of Samuel Anderson, and young Protestant boy on a farm outside Derry whose father, a UDR Sargeant, is assassinated by the IRA and who derives spiritual comfort from the preacher Mr Ellison and others in his religious community, ending with Ellison’s killing of his own son to prevent a sectarian murder; also Coral (Orion 1996), 300pp., a novel of a disillusioned young
Belfast woman who works in African aid camps, and returns to Donegal to
face terrible truth about death of her father.
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Criticism
Joseph O’Connor, ‘Mummies’ boy’, review of Swallowing the Sun, in The Guardian (1 May 2004) [‘ Flawed, brilliant, knotty, uncompromising, this is not an easy novel, but it is an important and beautiful one.’]
Also Aveen McManus, “Narratives of Childhood - A Comparative Study” (UU MA Diss., 2005) [with Frances Molloy, Jennifer Johnston, David Park, Glenn Patterson, Seamus Deane, Edna O’Brien, Patrick MacCabe].
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)