It is 1958 & the Sputnik satellite has taken a dog up into space; back on earth five-year-old Andy has a new sister Elaine
- a baby who his father insists is not quite all there. While his parents argue over whether or not to send Elaine away Andy sleeps beside her cot each night keeping guard & watching as his mother
- once an ambitious energetic nurse
- twists away into her private suffocating sadness. Knots keep treasures safe Andys rope-maker grandfather tells him & as he listens to stories of the great Harry Houdini Andy learns the Carrick Bend the Midshipmans Hitch & the Monkeys Fist. Then a young painter hired to decorate the familys house seems to call Andys mother back from the grief in which she is lost. But one day at The Siding
- the old railway carriage that serves as the familys seaside retreat
- Andy is left in charge of his baby sister on a wind-chopped beach where he discovers that not all treasures can be kept safe for ever. Three decades later Andrew returns from self-imposed exile to The Siding the place where his life first unravelled. Looking back on the broken strands of his childhood he tries at last to weave them together aided by his grandfathers copy of The Ashley Book of Knots & the arrival of a wild-haired tango-dancing sculptor
- a woman with her own ideas about making peace with the past. LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2011