In a rural community in the west of Ireland, ageing farmer Íosac Mulgannon is trying to keep hold of both his farm and a mute child left in his care.

The villagers regard the boy with suspicion — even as cursed — while Íosac, increasingly isolated and physically diminished, refuses the demands of neighbours, church, welfare authorities and a modernising agricultural world.

Dennis’s debut is made up of short, fractured sections move through bogs, cattle sheds, hurley sticks, bad weather, disappearing objects and communal superstition, allowing the threatened disappearance of small farming life to acquire the atmosphere of myth. The old man and child become a unit against the village: one rooted almost pathologically in place, the other unreadable to everyone around him. Beneath the novel’s folk-horror atmosphere is a sharp argument about land, inheritance, masculinity, institutional intervention and what happens when an entire way of life becomes economically and culturally obsolete. Contemporary reviews described it as dense, dark and unusually lyrical; that feels about right.

Edition & condition: époque press, 2021. First edition. Paperback. Light shelf and handling wear; internally clean and unmarked. Very good condition. The copyright page confirms this edition was published by époque press in 2021; the publisher lists it as its March 2021 release.