Thy Tears Might Cease

Farrell wrote only one book, spent all his life doing so, told everybody about it incessantly, didn't live long enough to finish it and startled everybody with its excellence when it appeared. The book centres on the 1916 period and addresses the confusion in the minds of young men who have not yet discriminated between the relative importance of patriotism and personal survival. One of the most irritating questions that all novelists have to field is, "How autobiographical is your book?" In Michael Farrell's case the answer feels as though it must be, "totally" but as he's not here to speak for himself let us accept it for the stirring fiction he intended to create. - Frank Delaney in The Guardian