This book starts with a normal knock at the door but already the tension and anxiety can be felt. The pace is gripping as Eilish tries to keep her family safe as the world round her gets darker and more violent. Set in a recognisable contemporary Ireland, this is a terrifying depiction of how countries can slip into totalitarianism. If you’ve ever felt distant from the experience of refugees, this will bring it up close.
Molly, have a think about that, maybe it’s going to where all the other cars go, the unmarked cars that pull up silently and lift people off the street because of one thing or another, the people who do not return home again, you think because you’re fourteen years old, you can do what you like, the state isn’t interested in you, but they arrested those boys, and those boys haven’t yet been released and they’re your age, you think I’m standing about waiting for your father to return, but what I am doing is keeping this family together and right now that is the hardest thing to do in a world that seems designed on tearing us apart
