Nothing Happens in Carmincross

Carmincross, where nothing happens, is a small town in Ulster. Mervyn Kavanagh, one of its wandering sons (Catholic as opposed to Protestant) has been teaching in America's 'semi-Deep South', where he has acquired - and lost - a wife. Now, in 1973, he is on his way home to attend the wedding of a favourite niece. As he sets off from Shannon toward tranquil Carmincross in the company of a former girlfriend, warm memories come flooding back. But one cloud proves impossible to dispel, for Mervyn is haunted by dark thoughts of bombs, rubber bullets, political murder, political mutilation, terrorism and counterterrorism - not only in Ireland, but with the Troubles, naturally enough, uppermost in his mind. For some, he meets en route, the perpetrators are gallant freedom fighters; for others, terrorist fanatics. Yet as the arguments bubble, another outrage is being prepared; and when at last it strikes, with a terrible inevitability, in Carmincross itself, the consequences are horrifyingly unpredictable. Tense, ironic, humane, horrifying and brutally funny, "Nothing Happens in Carmincross" is a masterpiece by one of Northern Ireland's greatest writers.