The Bend for Home

(Paperback, Main)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

One day, years after he's moved away from his childhood home in rural Ireland, Dermot Healy returns to care for his ailing mother. Out of the blue she hands him the forgotten diary he had kept as a fifteen-year-old. He is amazed to find the makings of the writer he has become, as well as taken aback at the changes his memory has wrought.

The silhouettes who have haunted his past come back to inhabit his pages: his father, a kind policeman who plays cards and drinks stout with his cronies; his mother, whose stories young Dermot has heard so often that he believes they are his own; or Aunt Maisie, whose early disappointment in love has left her both dreamy and cynical.

Funny, direct and moving, The Bend For Home is a family portrait like no other, and a hugely engaging account of a childhood in small-town Ireland.

Author Bio

Dermot Healy was a poet, novelist and dramatist. He lived in County Sligo and was the author of A Goat's Song, Sudden Times, The Bend for Home and Long Time, No See. He won the Hennessy Award (twice), the Tom Gallon Award, the Encore Award and the AWB Vincent American Ireland Fund Literary Award. He died in 2014.