Robbie is a simple man who leads a simple life: he is a husband, a father, and a journalist, living and working in Dublin. However, his carefully crafted life has been interrupted by a phone call from his youngest sister, calling, after years of silence, to say his father is ill, and he should come 'home'. And so Robbie returns to Dromore, Northern Ireland, and to Larkscroft Farm, the place where he grew up and the man he grew up with.

 

In taking care of his father - an often angry, and complex man - Robbie allows the reader into his past, revealing himself as a child, teenager, and young adult, lost in the often tumultuous world of a dysfunctional family. Such insight is rare and privileged as you begin to see that no-one in Robbie’s ‘new’ life knows anything about his past, not even his wife.

 

My Father's House is a real and often raw account of family relationships. In Robbie and in his family there is a myriad of messy, mixed up people, tentatively sewing up the rips and tears on their way to reconciliation. This is a novel about birthplace, family, regret, and new beginnings.