The County Wexford landscape and the death of the father are the narrative material, which Colm Tóibín would revisit again in The Blackwater Lightship.

The novel also plots the development of Fianna Fáil from the austere republicanism and style of Éamon de Valera to the corruption of the Charles Haughey era.

[citation needed] Nicola Upson wrote in the Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature, that the story of Eamon Redmond is "absorbing" and that it is a "beautiful portrayal of the little moments of everyday life as it is in its dealings with the bigger questions of sexual awakening, loss, and grief".

[5] Mark Harman wrote in the Los Angeles Times, that the author "tells this moving tale in such a deceptively straightforward manner that it would be easy to mistake the novel for a good read and nothing more than that ... yet the more one thinks about this clear-headed yet intense book, the stronger the impression it leaves".

[6] In her review for The Village Voice, Laurie Muchnick says it is a "beautifully written book, the prose fluid and never flashy, the structure perfectly suited to the story", and that she was surprised at its "subtle humor, and its awareness of small ironies".