Trick or treat. Before Christmas Eve, life asks him if he is willing to repay what little generosity he has received so far...
Christmas 1985 is just one day away, but Bill Furlong, a coal, timber and peat merchant in the Irish town of New Ross, is still busily loading his goods. Although the ladies' household in the form of his wife and five underage girls forces him to enjoy the climax of Advent, the last neighbours still need to be provided for. They won't freeze! In addition, it is worth wishing the local heads a happy and merry holiday, because the angry worker does not know when it may be useful. Nor must the nuns of the convent, on whose intercession so much depends in the region - indeed, the happiness of the charcoal-maker's youngest daughter depends on it, but... But no sooner does Bill catch sight of the impoverished figure in the shed of the influential Catholic institution than everything clenches within him. He himself has been struggling since childhood only thanks to the charity of others, and suddenly he is again faced with a limiting situation. Can the unspectacular hero with the same determination break the circle of Evil, which always looks as if it is not dark?
A hauntingly Christmassy yet biting novel, nominated for the 2022 Booker Prize, this admired Irish novelist reflects on the conditions that still gripped her country in the late 1980s. Under the clergy, Ireland then was a far cry from today's model prosperity. Faith is unbelief, holidays are not holidays.
