Secrets and lies and social issues

FICTION: Tanglewood. By Dermot Bolger. New Island Press, €14. Reviewed by Sara Keating.

Dermot Bolger: mining a social realist thread. Picture: Feargal Ward
Dermot Bolger: mining a social realist thread. Picture: Feargal Ward

As a young woman, Alice left her home in Blackrock, Co Dublin for Toronto, where she discovered the joys of freedom and self-reliance. Exploring the outskirts of the city on her own one day, she comes across a small enclave of houses on a lake “filled with old trees and plenty of space to breathe”.

The enclave is called Tanglewood, and she vows that: “One ...