A Goat’s Song

Jack Ferris, a Catholic playwright from the west of Ireland, falls for Catherine Adams, the daughter of a Protestant RUC officer from the north. Healy moves between their affair, her father’s history, and Jack’s drinking, and the border runs through all of it without ever being the point. Published in 1994 and long championed by other writers, it is the novel Irish novelists tend to name when asked what deserves more readers.