This novel-in-stories is about both the boy's coming of age and the Troubles of Northern Ireland, from the partition of the island in the early 1920s until July 1971, just after the violent Battle of the Bogside took place in Derry.

This structure provides the reader with telling glimpses of crucial events in the narrator's life: the gloom of grinding poverty and injustice is relieved at times by hilarious and vivacious dialogue.

The power of the Church and the authority of police, atheism versus faith, the nature of courage, subjugation by various hierarchies, family loves and loyalties, the yearning for education, and the impact of economic hardship are central themes .

[2] Kelly describes the work as a "metaphysical detective story in which the clues add up to an epiphany of entrapment...Deane's novel excavates nationalist alienation with devastating singlemindedness" (p. 435).

He also comments on Deane's art as a poet, "rehears[ing] certain images until they become emblematic", in this case a confrontation between republican gunmen and loyalist police.

In Secret Hauntings [3] Linden Peach highlights the secrecy which "has been such a feature of Irish cultural life", and which is portrayed in this work with great poignancy.

(p. 176) In her work, McGuff Skinner cites critical writing by Elmer Kennedy-Andrews,[5] Gerry Smyth,[6] as well as a review by Andrew O'Hehir at Salon.

(p. 5) "The dismembered streets lay strewn all around the ruined distillery where Uncle Eddie had fought, aching with a long, dolorous absence."