A Goat's Song

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In the west of Ireland, Jack Ferris, a playwright, has reached a moment of crisis in his life. Misunderstandings, alcohol and despair have driven away his actress lover, Catherine. As he tries to cope with his loss by re-creating her in his imagination, he reinvents the past and two opposing worlds - one Protestant, the other Catholic - come vividly to life. Catherine's father Jonathan Adams, a Northern Ireland policeman whose sense of duty to the RUC had given him an unwanted place in the history of the Troubles, comes to have a particular significance for Ferris. Jonathan's attraction to a Catholic South which also repels him mirrors Jack's later difficulties when he moves with Catherine to violence-torn Belfast. Both, in their different ways, remain outsiders. A Goat's Song is a powerful and honest examination of the divisions within Ireland, refracted through the consciousness and imagination of one troubled man.