Dancing With Minnie The Twig

Narrated by a young boy, this is a short coming-of-age novel - which opens at his funeral.

A promising debut by any standard ... The sense of a time and place about to change forever is achieved with no little subtlety ... Keeps the reader hooked right to the end

'One of the simplest and blackest rites of passage books you will come across'

Mogue Doyle has been in the building trade most of his life. He and his family live in County Wexford, Ireland.

Rural Ireland in the 1960s: if you were a boy, you listened to Luxembourg on the wireless, went to the pictures, went hurling up the fields with your best friend, thought about what the big boys got up to with the girls, and in particular what your brother did with his girlfriend, Minnie. Your mam ruled the house and you watched out for your father - the old lad - who was liable to fly into rages and give you a right ringer when you weren't expecting it. Most of all, you knew everything about the village where you lived, and everyone there. And Tony did; he was one smart boy, ready for anything - at least he thought he was until the day he saw his father with Mrs Rourke and was involved in an accident that changed everything. 
 
Dancing with Minnie the Twig is Tony's story. It is a haunting and very special novel as, on the day of his funeral, he watches his family, friends and the rest of the community arrive at the church and prepare for the service to mark the end of his short life. In terms of its rural setting and its focus on a small community that, even in Ireland, has long since ceased to exist, the book has real echoes of Dancing at Lughnasa. It's Irish in the best sense of the word; the characters step out of the pages to meet you, and although Tony is dead, his narrative voice blazes with life. Very funny in parts, the novel is overlaid with a melancholy for times past that lingers long after the final page has been turned.

Mogue Doyle

Doyle's lyrical writing is rich in old fashioned speech patterns, detailed evocative descriptions and fierce action sequences. It all makes for fresh, original writing

His talent for prose [is] at once poetic and excitingly rough. Doyle's language vibrates with unexpected music - just like the slice of ancient stone in the story, beneath which resonates a horse's skull

A wonderful piece of storytelling. Here are the raw emotions of love, jealousy and a lust for revenge set against a backcloth of the turbulent 1920s in County Wexford

In Springmount, County Wexford, Will hides away to watch Kate Kelly through her cottage window - a moth at the glass. As the strains of the St Anne's Reel fill the air, Kate and her brother Philly begin to dance on the newly laid floor of their living room, while old Mrs Kelly looks on from beside the fire. Desperate to understand how the terrible tragedy in his past can haunt his present, Will thinks back to the 1920s: a halcyon time. 
Romantic expectation dominates this period of change and tension when traditional order gives way to the new political awareness, and the ties of family and friends no longer hold so much sway. Mountain lads roam country lanes, loaded pistols in their pockets, and innocence and romance are corrupted by a physical passion that runs all too deep.

Mogue Doyle

Praise for A Moth At The Glass

Doyle's lyrical writing is rich in old fashioned speech patterns, detailed evocative descriptions and fierce action sequences. It all makes for fresh, original writing

His talent for prose [is] at once poetic and excitingly rough. Doyle's language vibrates with unexpected music - just like the slice of ancient stone in the story, beneath which resonates a horse's skull

A wonderful piece of storytelling. Here are the raw emotions of love, jealousy and a lust for revenge set against a backcloth of the turbulent 1920s in County Wexford

Doyle's lyrical writing is rich in old fashioned speech patterns, detailed evocative descriptions and fierce action sequences. It all makes for fresh, original writing

His talent for prose [is] at once poetic and excitingly rough. Doyle's language vibrates with unexpected music - just like the slice of ancient stone in the story, beneath which resonates a horse's skull

A wonderful piece of storytelling. Here are the raw emotions of love, jealousy and a lust for revenge set against a backcloth of the turbulent 1920s in County Wexford

Doyle's lyrical writing is rich in old fashioned speech patterns, detailed evocative descriptions and fierce action sequences. It all makes for fresh, original writing

His talent for prose [is] at once poetic and excitingly rough. Doyle's language vibrates with unexpected music - just like the slice of ancient stone in the story, beneath which resonates a horse's skull

A wonderful piece of storytelling. Here are the raw emotions of love, jealousy and a lust for revenge set against a backcloth of the turbulent 1920s in County Wexford

Books by Mogue Doyle

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