One day,
years after he's moved away from his childhood home in rural Ireland, Dermot
Healy returns to care for his ailing mother. Out of the blue she hands him the
forgotten diary he had kept as a fifteen-year-old. He is amazed to find the
makings of the writer he has become, as well as taken aback at the changes his
memory has wrought upon the events of the past. Here is the seed of his
story-the vision of the boy meets the memory of the man-which creates a
stunning, illusory effect. The strange silhouettes who have haunted his past
come back to inhabit these pages: his father, a kind policeman who guides him
back to bed when he stumbles down the stairs sleepwalking; his mother, whose
stories young Dermot has heard so often that he believes they are his own; or
Aunt Masie, whose early disappointment in love has left her both dreamy and
cynical.
