And the Culhanes?

The Culhanes are receding from us, slowly, year by year. Soon we will have lost them altogether. I think about them often, out there in the west, in the stuffy rooms of their enormous house, waiting in silence as the evenings draw in and the weather gets gradually worse. They are alone on a bleak and emptying island, receding and alone, alone at last where everything ends, sitting out their ruined lives on Inishfall.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Some thanks are due:

To Frank McGuinness, for his support, guidance and unfailing kindness; to Antony Farrell and all at The Lilliput Press, particularly Fiona Dunne, Kathy Gilfillan, Vivienne Guinness, Elske Rahill, and Tom Morris, for their enthusiasm and attention to detail; to Lucy Luck, for generous help and advice; to Ron Callan, for his faultless stewardship of my PhD; to some invaluable early readers: Jeanne-Marie Ryan, Simon Ashe-Browne, Dave Fleming, Eoin O’Connell, Jesse Weaver, Faela Stafford, Louise Aitchison, and Adam Kelly; and also to Marianne Gunn O’Connor and Pat Lynch, for their extraordinary efforts on behalf of Bad Day; to Suzanne Baboneau and all at Simon & Schuster for their enthusiasm and faith; and to Cormac Kinsella, Bert Wright, John Boyne, Claire Kilroy, Peter Murphy, Dermot Bolger, Caroline Walsh, Carlo Gebler, and Nadine O’Regan, for helping this book to find its way in the world.