The past is another county

In The Wake Of The Bagger, by Jack Harte, Scotus Press, €9.95.

This first novel from the accomplished short story writer Jack Harte is truly a many-splendoured thing. Loosely autobiographical, it tells the story of the Dowd family, who leaves their beloved coastal Sligo for a midlands town and the employment opportunities provided by the industrialisation of the Bog of Allen in the 1950s.

While a lesser writer might have happily settled for ...