The Bend for Home

The Bend for Home is a family portrait like no other. Naturally and unassumingly, Dermot Healy explores the obdurancy of memory and the vagaries of recollection. Wheter he is describing the family's move from the sleepy village of Finea, County Westmeath, to the bustling market town of Cavan; or his father, a kind policeman in poor health, who plays cards and drinks stout with his cronies; or 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 (the two sisters run a thriving cafe and bakery), Healy maintains that magnificient true storyteller's distance and playfulness. At the center of the book is a diary the author kept as a boy and which his mother held on to, returning it only in her last years. Through this intriguing and often hilarious document-written in a code so secret even the author himself couldn't decipher parts of it-comes a powerfully conniving portrait of an artist unlike anything since James Joyce's classic.