Good little novella. The aftermath of the Irish property crash is told through twenty-one voices including out-of-pocket builders, their partners and children, unmarried mothers, ghosts and foreigners. All have their own unique and interesting thoughts on their fate and that of their small-town neighbours. Ryan’s prose is engaging, there's an endearing musicality to his colloquial speech and he incorporates humour to good effect. Grappling with so many points of view wasn’t as confusing as I thought it would be. Each character is given one chapter and every monologue falls seamlessly into the narrative which centres around the young foreman Bobby Mahon. It doesn’t take long for some hard to swallow truths to surface about the narrow-minded, back-biting, begrudging nature of life in rural Ireland. The token blow-in, the old busy-body, tortured fathers and sons along with a murder and missing child eventually bring the whole sorry lot together. A too-soon reminder of the crash that brought the country to it’s knees, and the egomania that’s at risk of putting us back there. Better it was short. Worth the read.