A typical adolescent, Jack Fristensky is consumed by uncertainty about who he is, his place in the world and, of course, his burgeoning sexuality. Less typically, he must also contend with his mother’s suicide and his father’s subsequent admission to a mental hospital. Effectively orphaned, he is sent to live with his mother’s ‘mad, mysterious family’ – his grandparents, Aunt Rose and three uncles, Theo, Haulie and JJ, the last of whom is only two years his senior.
All the characters are richly and idiosyncratically drawn. But whereas, in previous novels, from his earliest, The Spinning Heart, to the most recent, Heart, Be at Peace, the award-winning Irish author Donal Ryan has specialised in multiple viewpoints, here his third-person narrative exclusively inhabits Jack’s consciousness. The writing, particularly in the early childhood section, recalls James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
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