Francie Brady, the broken Butcher Boy, leads a busy life in Fizzbag Mansions, where he has been incarcerated since Mrs Nugent met her unfortunate end. Still obsessed with the comic books and fantasy world of his childhood, he has found a new métier — as a publisher of his very own magazine, The Big Yaroo.

As Francie throws himself into its production, he is revisited by characters from his past including Uncle Alo, Joe Purcell and of course his beloved mother. Caught between a desire to escape his past and a need to exorcise his terrible childhood demons, Francie struggles to build his fledgling career, but is increasingly drawn into the dark underworld of his own mind.

This profoundly moving sequel to McCabe’s bestselling The Butcher Boy asks some uncomfortable questions about redemption, religion and the hidden world of small-town Ireland. Written in McCabe’s trademark fluid, stream-of-consciousness style, the novel explores the limits of psychological stability and the arbitrary delineation between reality and delusion.