The novel’s final image is startling, enigmatic, beautiful and challenging. Through it, Casey appears to urge a re-examination of that which we assume to be philosophically ordered, and to confront our own dreams just as Dan does: which implies that nothing is separate and that the world has a wild inter-dependance that rises even from the genetic, cellular mine of our own bodies.
A fresh and intriguing book that many writers would love to have written.” Mary O’Donnell
“The Water Star is, somehow, haunting.”
John Kenny, The Irish Times
“The tale that unfolds in this thick, satisfying volume is not particularly complex – any more than the circumstances of any of our lives are complex, which is to say, infinitely and infinitesimally so.”
Erica Wagner, The Times, London
This is a passionate, erotic, mature novel that displays many of the virtues which contemporary Irish fiction so conspicuously lacks: an intelligent vision of an adult relationship coupled with an intelligent vision of contemporary Irish society. Plus, he has a supple prose style which is a constant joy to read.
- Ronan Sheehan, The Irish Press, October 1994
˜Before he was known to readers as a world class fictionist, Philip Casey gave us poems. On the evidence of Dialogue in Fading Light, he remains always and ever a poet of great powers. The wonder and longing, gratitude and grace that inform this work make us grateful for Casey’s many gifts.” Thomas Lynch

Photo owned by MikeSchinkel (cc) In a minor battle of the 1798 Rebellion in Wexford, HUGH Byrne kills the black drummer of the Ancient Briton regiment. Sickened by the carnage, he leaves it and his belovéd CATHLEEN behind, but is captured, ending up as an indentured labourer or white slave in the Irish-dominated island of Montserrat, in the Caribbean.

Photo owned by Boocal (cc) Miolmór was too brave to complain, but they understood that all was not well in the Western Ocean. The mortals were taking over everything from the top to the bottom, and the ocean was so full of noise there was hardly anywhere a whale could find peace.