Long before we discovered that he had fathered two children by two
different women, one in Drimoleague and one in Clonakilty, Father James
Monroe stood on the altar of the Church of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, in
the parish of Goleen, West Cork, and denounced my mother as a whore.
Cyril Avery is not a real Avery or at least that’s what his adoptive parents
tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn’t a real Avery, then who is
he?
Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish
community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple (via the
intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun) Cyril is adrift in the
world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the
infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.
At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime attempting to know
himself and to discover where he came from – and over his three score
years and ten, will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country, a
place of belonging.
Coded by Lucy Munro ♥