Gander At The Gate

The lyrical prose of Rory O'Connor tells of an Irish farmhouse, the family who lived there, and the community of which they were part. We discover the imaginings and adventures of the local 'goboys'; the widow Delia and her sons lost to America; and the eccentric Uncle Jack, full of 'riddles, and recitations, and the latest rhymes and small poems'. As the gander of the title - the fiercest beast of the farmyard - begins to intrude on his consciousness, O'Connor describes his youthful wonders and apprehensions, and the darker shadows cast by his father's experience in Ireland's civil war.