The living

the long version

The Troubles may be officially over but, for the first generation to come of age in Ireland's flimsy peacetime, the ghosts of the past are all too close to home ... Cate Houlihan is adrift in a life that doesn't feel her own, struggling with a new job at an eccentric publishing house and stifled by overbearing parents. When romance blossoms with the gorgeous, intelligent - and British - Matthew Taylor, it seems as if things might finally be going her way. But Cate's job brings her into contact with the country's Republican past. And the lines between this, her family, and her new relationship are beginning to blur ...