The Boy in the Moon by Kate O'Riordan

'What perversity would lead a man to court the disaster he most fears, and overrule the instinct to protect his own child? The Boy in the Moon is a relentless opening of wounds which have scarred in childhood and can still twist body and spirit. When O'Riordan describes the Donovan children with their pitiful longing to please their implacable father, there is a sting in her writing.'
HELEN DUNMORE,  The Times

'While O'Riordan's eye for the intricacies of a good story is splendid, the real strength of The Boy in the Moon lies in the gradual awakenings and epiphanies of her well-turned characters. She has managed to write a book whose pivotal points are tragedies yet which never descends into the mawkish or glib, showing a mastery of the empathetic. I am already looking forward to her next novel.'
LOUISE EAST, Irish Times

'A real cliffhanger, the plot so finely spun that critical dissection would be like taking a hurley to a dew-hung Irish gossamer. O'Riordan's Ireland is rather that of the unquiet soul than of The Quiet Man. Exquisitely spare in execution, The Boy in the Moon is a haunting examination of human strength and frailty.' 
BRIAN DAVIS, Time Out

'O'Riordan's work is concerned with hidden things, the unsettling secrets of the past that seep into the present. That revelatory quality is evident in all her work, as well as a strain of violence, visceral and disturbingly realistic.'
EITHNE FARRY, Irish Post