'Swallowing up her neighbour's five fields into her own vast stretch of land was Jude Fortune's unspoken aim, but four years had now slipped by and her cattle had never once got a chance to graze in the field where words and wonders once twined together. Jude's resolve was durable and year after year she suggested the actual terms to her renewing the lease, but her pumice stone had minimal effect on the wodjous woman, Mrs. Minnie O'Brien.'

In 1987, Christopher Nolan's story of his childhood, Under the Eye of the Clock, won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award. His first novel, twelve years in the creation, confirms the promise of a wrtier who has been compared to Joyce and Yeats and yet is uniquely talented.

Christopher Nolan's poetic and distinctively layered prose flows into this generous tale of a spirited old woman and her struggle to hold together the five fields left to her by her husband and fiercely guarded against the day of her prodigal younger son's return. Full of humour and unexpected imagery, the story follows Minnis O'Brien's progress, as a young bride sipping her first and only glass of white wine in Dublin - 'the city of just about right' - and as a widowed mother discovering that the husband she loved had secrets he kept even from her. A story told without bitterness, it is as full of colour and life as the Westmeath countryside that Minnie loves.