Secrecy and suburban lives

Suburban sprawl came later to Ireland than it did to America, where writers like John Cheever and Richard Yates were documenting the stultifying environment of small-town America in the late 1950s. It wasn’t until the 1970s that Dublin began to experience a similar swell of middle-class malaise, and it was far longer before the new reality made any impression on Irish writing.

Christine ...