Fields

Product Description

I slept right through to the next day. Missed the funeral & everything. Mam said it was just as well. Would've been too upsetting. I think of him now though. Right at this moment. Here in this kitchen. & I wonder if it could've been different. Dublin 1984: Ireland is a divided country the Parish Priest remains a figure of immense authority & Jim Finnegan is thirteen years old the youngest in a family of five sisters. Life in Jim's world consists of dealing with the helter-skelter intensity of his rumbustious family taking breakneck bike rides with his best friend & quietly coveting the local girls from afar. But after a drunken yet delicate rendition of ' The Fields of Athenry' at the Donohues' raucous annual party Jim captures both the attention of the beautiful Saidhbh Donohue & the unwanted desires of the devious & dangerous Father Luke O' Culigeen. Bounced between his growing love for Saidhbh & his need to avoid the dreaded O' Culigeen Jim's life starts to unravel. He & Saidhbh take a ferry for a clandestine trip to London that has dark & difficult repercussions forcing Jim to look for the solution to all his problems in some very unusual places. The Fields is an unforgettable story of an extraordinary character: Jim's voice leaps off the page & straight into the reader's heart as he grapples with his unfairly interrupted adolescence. Lyrical funny profoundly original & endlessly inventive it is a brilliant debut from a remarkable new voice.