Coming of age story has a heart of darkness

The Fields by Kevin Maher

**Little, Brown, €16.35**

**Reviewed by Joanne Hayden**

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The twin themes of violence and healing are present from the beginning of Kevin Maher's debut novel. In an early scene, a local girl is smashed in the mouth by a hockey ball.

The incident involves a kind of prefiguring, which Maher uses, along with black comedy and infinite narrative energy, to tell his necessarily upsetting story.

The hero of ...