Colm O'Gaora's debut novel opens at a funeral in rural Ireland. Conor Kelly is burying his wife and to pay for it he has had to sell land. Kelly is embittered by the death of his wife, the loss of his land and at being forced into a new role of bringing up his daughter, Helen. O'Gaora has already made a reputation for himself as a sensitive and acute writer with the publication of his collection of short stories, Giving Ground. A Crooked Field reinforces this reputation and as the novel follows Helen from Ireland to the dark streets of London and the exile Irish community, so O'Gaora atmospherically evokes the shadowy world of run-down flats and dead-end jobs. Helen physically and metaphorically-- she becomes involved with a worker on the underground--digs deep into London and into herself but in the silence of the nights still recalls her home: "the keening of wind in the telegraph wires, the bawl of a dog or a donkey, the drone of a solitary car tracking along the road". As the story loops back again to Ireland it is clear that both Helen and her father have fundamentally changed and O'Gaora delicately handles their anguished efforts at making a new accommodation with each other and with the past. --Nick Wroe