Noel Boyle needs a new life and he has come to Dublin to find it. He dreams of transformation and renewal. But as he struggles to overcome his loneliness and to keep despair at bay his attempts at change seem futile and almost comic. One thing offers the possibility of salvation: a woman. Boyle starts a relationship with Eleanor, who is beguiling yet remote, playful yet serious in her suggestion that he return to England with her. Can he take the chance or will it be the excessive street-poet Fada who, by tempting hum back into the violence of his past, will determine his future? All the while the face of a young woman pulled from the Liffey haunts his mind and awakens an ancient rage in his gut … Ablaze with stories of lives lived and lost, this novel is a darkly beautiful meditation on the idea of escape and what it is that keeps us tethered to the world.