Philip Casey

“An ordin­ary, almost staid, couple are over­whelmed by crisis when their third child is born. The book starts off fairly ordin­ary and staid too, but this makes the crisis all the more real­istic when it hits and easier to sym­path­ize with. Once the new baby is born, the writ­ing becomes sens­it­ive and involving, the char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion sharper and deeper and it’s pos­sible to really care about what has happened and what will hap­pen. As the trust and com­mu­nic­a­tion between the par­ents break down, threat­en­ing the fab­ric of the fam­ily, Dan, the hus­band, bolts to his father’s house in Ireland.

He becomes bet­ter acquain­ted with his father, with his fam­ily his­tory and with the his­tory of Ire­land, a coun­try he’s never before thought of as his own. Kate, his wife, is left to cope with two chil­dren and a new baby. Dan’s beha­viour is enough to make the reader want to give him a good shake but Casey explores his motiv­a­tion with such sens­it­iv­ity that it’s impossible not to be on his side too. In the midst of this emo­tional agon­iz­ing, the action moves two hun­dred years to the Irish Rebel­lion of the late 18^th cen­tury and Carib­bean island of Mont­ser­rat, where even Irish­men could be land­lords and sla­ve­own­ers. In its own quiet way this novel is unset­tling and even shock­ing as it chal­lenges the reader to step into Dan’s shoes: are you as open-minded, as trust­ing, as loyal as you think you are?“
–Kirkus UK

“a beau­ti­ful, evoc­at­ive tale of love tested.“
Sue Leonard, Irish Examiner

“this wise, tender novel.“
Paul Magrs, TLS

“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, Amazon.co.uk

See review page

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The Fisher Child can be bought online at Amazon UK

The Fisher Child, the final volume in The Bann River Tri­logy, is pub­lished by Pic­ador of Lon­don
ISDN 0 330 48301 3 hardback

ISDN 0 330 48302 1 paperback

Pic­ador Hard­back blurb

Grow­ing up in Irish fam­il­ies in Lon­don, Dan and Kate first met unenthu­si­ast­ic­ally as chil­dren in the 1970s. Now, years later, they are on hol­i­day in Italy, mar­ried, in love, par­ents to a boy and girl. And when Kate dis­cov­ers she is preg­nant again, it seems they will be closer than ever.

But when Meg is born, their lives are changed utterly. Trust is replaced with sus­pi­cion and anger. Dan flees to Ire­land and to his father, seek­ing to under­stand what has happened to his fam­ily and to him­self. It is clear, how­ever, that his bewil­der­ment has much older roots. We are taken back to 1798 where Dan’s ancestor, Hugh Byrne, is fight­ing on Vin­egar Hill in the Rebel­lion. Troubled by the viol­ence done to his fam­ily, and the viol­ence in him­self, Hugh goes into exile in the trop­ics, where he gradu­ally over­comes his pre­ju­dice and remorse and begins a fam­ily with a young woman, Ama.

The Fisher Child is the third novel in Philip Casey’s Bann River Tri­logy and is his best fic­tion to date, demon­strat­ing, with acute sens­it­iv­ity, the threads of the past that exist in every fam­ily. The Fisher Child is a touch­ing and at times, agon­ising, explor­a­tion of the con­stantly shift­ing nature of love. It is a book that will linger long in the memory.