Both lyrical and bleak, this story captures the protagonist’s hopeless choices in the harsh and divisive world of Northern Ireland. The narrative voice has the flat affect of a person who is both shell shocked and cannot believe he is really capable of or deserving of love or even respect. Yet even with that flatness, that voice is still very moving. When Cal does find love, it is complicated by layers of seemingly unsolvable circumstances that leave the reader wondering and hoping to the last sentence …

“Sometimes in her presence he felt like Quasimodo – as if the ugliness of what he had done showed in his face. The brand in the middle of his forehead would never disappear and seemed to throb when she was near. Alone, now, he relaxed into his ugliness. To hell, why not? If he could not take her like Sleeping Beauty then he could ravish the things which surrounded her. His impotence was something he could smell and touch.”