JACK McNulty is a “temporary gentleman”

– a man who is assigned a position of status in the British Army for the duration of the Second World War. The rest of the time he’s a heavy drinker, a neglectful husband, an absent father, a gambler and, at the end, a coward, who is too scared to return home to Ireland.

Writing an honest account of his past from his current home in Accra, Ghana, his trip down memory lane seems almost an act of contrition for all the wrongs he’s committed in his life and it’s an absorbing, tender and absolutely fascinating read. Awardwinning author Sebastian Barry has constructed a beautifully written, heartbreaking portrait of an ordinary man, exploring the Irish Troubles, the two World Wars, de-colonisation, religion and nationalism while doing so. Fans of Barry’s work will welcome this new novel with open arms, while readers new to his writing will eagerly want to reach out for the rest of his back-catalogue.

Alison Potter