Harry Ward quotes Larkin mid-fight and scribbles Yeats on beer mats. This isn’t pretentious, it’s survival. If you’ve ever written truth on a napkin just to stay sane, this book will gut you.

No shamrocks, no shillelaghs, just real Dublin: Finglas estates, dodgy bookies, and pubs that still won’t serve Travellers. This novel doesn’t romanticize the city, it sees it.

Part Markson, part Lowry, part bare-knuckle memoir. Duncan’s fragmented, poetic style feels like a lost manuscript someone rescued from a Galway canal and it’s brilliant.

What I loved is that it isn’t poverty porn. It’s a raw look at how Ireland treats its “invisible” people, and what happens when one of them dares to say: “I was here. Read me.”

No redemption arc and not even a tidy ending just for the sake of it. This story is just about a broken man who writes his truth and gets crushed anyway. Refreshing, brutal, unforgettable.

I cried at the line: “If my words are not in a book, then they are not real.” This book is a love letter to anyone who’s ever feared being forgotten.