Ghosts and Lightning

Happy or unhappy, all families are a mystery. None more than the Cullens. Having escaped their clutches and moved across the water, Denny is just beginning to make a life for himself when a call from his sister brings him back to Dublin, city of his birth. Back to square one. As if squabbling siblings and unhelpful childhood friends weren’t trouble enough, a ghost starts making appearances in the family home and Denny’s life starts to get a lot more complicated. Full of riotous laughter, wonderment and love found in the most unlikely places, Ghosts and Lightning is an exuberant tale of someone trying to do the right thing surrounded by the wrong choices. It is also a revealing chronicle of our times from an exceptional new Irish talent.

Reviews of Ghosts and Lightning

* Ghosts and Lightning is a powerful novel and Trevor Byrne is a very powerful writer. The narrator, Denny, and the others around him are great characters, often funny, sometimes frightening, always very human. I loved it. — Roddy Doyle * This is an amazing book, written with force and passion. And Denny is a very funny and slightly demented tour guide to twenty-first century Dublin. A gripping and dark ride to the mad side of town, Ghosts and Lightning marks Byrne as a writer to get hooked on. — Matt Haig * Ghosts and Lightning is engaging and funny. Trevor Byrne delivers an acute portrayal of loss in a story filled with warmth, humour and wonder. — Catherine O'Flynn, Author Of What Was Lost * Byrne's voice crackles with energy and dark humour in a richly-evoked novel of Dublin family life. Irish Independent * Byrne is depicting a similar kind of urban underclass to the one Roddy Doyle has written about, with the same humour and attention to detail…Also in common with Doyle, Byrne does it without being patronizing or pitying. Scottish Review of Books 20090501 * Funny and entertaining, yet tinged with sadness and desperation … there is much to applaud in Byrne's powerful debut. His writing is concise and unfussy, yet not without literary flourishes … Judging by this poignant, compelling and often deeply comic tale of life on the margins of Irish society, Byrne seems certain to enjoy greater longevity than the Celtic tiger. Sunday Business Post 20090628 * Lurching, wisecracking, poignant and drunken … engaging, exhuberant, hilarious … Fans of Roddy Doyle will be agreeably entertained, while the semantically minded may be inclined to marvel at the numerous variations on the word "fuck". — Catherine Taylor Guardian 20090627 * Trevor Byrne's first novel looks like the Irish debut we have been waiting for, a novel which could fill out our incomplete literary map of Ireland and allow southwest Dublin to take its place alongside Toibin's Enniscorthy, McCabe's Monaghan or Doyle's Northside. — Barry McRea Irish Times 20090620