Don't be put off - as I was - by the subject matter of this brilliant debut novel. An obsessive love story set on a family farm in Tipperary and involving a pouty young historian, his gauche, restless sister-in-law and a genetically engineered sheep? Yes, it sounds like a recipe for disaster, but in Haverty's capable hands it turns into something disturbingly close to the truth about contemporary Ireland - and this in spite of (or because of?) the eminently dislikeable narrative voice of the incorrigibly selfish Martin Hawkins. As for cruelty to animals, what happens to the sheep is nothing compared to the sheer awfulness of man's, and woman's, inhumanity to each other. For a first novel, it's a stunner.
