This collection of short stories should be marketed to homesick expats. Not because it's full of heartwarming tales of the auld sod – it's not – but because it so accurately captures the way Irish people speak. Open any page and the lonely emigrant would be back home, listening to people who describe things as sound, talk about going to the Mammy for their dinner, and wonder if the old man left a big lump behind him. The stories are set in today's Ireland, generally in the west, and told from the point of view of men coping with today's problems, such as broken marriages, troubled children and illness. My favourite was the title story, Forensic Songs , which is masterful in its use of language as it cuts between a television cop drama and a disintegrating marriage. In Heaven's Mandate , a former politician's ego is so undented by disability and old age that he plans to pull rank on God. Dark, but hilarious.
