Reading in the Dark — Seamus Deane

Set in postwar Northern Ireland, where the unquiet ghosts of the Troubles walk alongside the warriors and changelings of Celtic legend, Seamus Deane's first novel is the transfixing story of a boy trying to uncover the secrets of the adult world. And in Reading in the Dark, every adult has a secret -- of family feuds and political treachery, unexplained disappearances and unsolved murders, and of sorrow so bitter that it is passed down through generations.

Deane's unnamed narrator searches for the truth amid a forest of rumors and legends: of an uncle who may have died a hero of the IRA or absconded to America; of a grandfather who may have killed one man and ordered the deaths of many more; of a child who comes back from the grave and of two others who vanish into one amid an unholy blaze of greenish light. As orchestrated by Deane, these events coalesce into a work of unforgettable power, written in ravishing prose and overflowing with tenderness, sadness, menace, and dark wit.