In the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a family man confronts his past and a discovery which leads him to find and renew the fire and freshness in his heart. Told with restraint and grace, it displays Claire Keegan’s phenomenal talent, a writer who has won praise from Hilary Mantel, Anne Enright and Richard Ford.

Claire Keegan grew up on a farm in Wicklow. Her first collection of short stories, Antarctica, was completed in 1998. It announced her as an exceptionally gifted and versatile writer of contemporary fiction, and she was awarded the Rooney Prize for Literature. Her second short-story collection, Walk the Blue Fields, was published to enormous critical acclaim in 2007 and won her the 2008 Edge Hill Prize for Short Stories. Foster, a short novel, was published in 2010 and won the Davy Byrnes Award, judged by Richard Ford. Claire Keegan lives in County Wexford, Ireland.