A Moth At The Glass

Nov 7, 2025 6:39 AM

Author:Mogue Doyle

A Moth At The Glass

In Springmount, County Wexford, Will hides away to watch Kate Kelly through her cottage window - a moth at the glass. As the strains of the St Anne's Reel fill the air, Kate and her brother Philly begin to dance on the newly laid floor of their living room, while old Mrs Kelly looks on from beside the fire. Desperate to understand how the terrible tragedy in his past can haunt his present, Will thinks back to the 1920s: a halcyon time.

Romantic expectation dominates this period of change and tension when traditional order gives way to the new political awareness, and the ties of family and friends no longer hold so much sway. Mountain lads roam country lanes, loaded pistols in their pockets, and innocence and romance are corrupted by a physical passion that runs all too deep.

Reviews

Doyle's lyrical writing is rich in old fashioned speech patterns, detailed evocative descriptions and fierce action sequences. It all makes for fresh, original writing

—— Irish Times

His talent for prose [is] at once poetic and excitingly rough. Doyle's language vibrates with unexpected music - just like the slice of ancient stone in the story, beneath which resonates a horse's skull

—— Guardian

A wonderful piece of storytelling. Here are the raw emotions of love, jealousy and a lust for revenge set against a backcloth of the turbulent 1920s in County Wexford

—— Yorkshire Post

Walker's first novel is a treat. It's well written and features great characters, lots of humor, and dead-on analysis of friendship, marriage, and motherhood.

—— Library Journal

Cocteau never meant his work to pass as anyone else's, and even when it is imitative it bears a maker's mark that would disqualify any forger: the stamp of a master of paradox and aesthetic epigram, who supplied a unique - and enduring - connection between the classic and the new

—— Francis Steegmuller

What stands out...is Oz's strident lyricism

—— Rosanna Boscawen , Observer

So full of surprises that even to start describing it you have to give a few away...compelling

—— Sunday Times

A novel of scintillating brilliance... a modern myth of good and evil... Gripping

—— Metro

A dissection of the emotional fissures that tear families apart

—— Mail on Sunday

The novel...is thoughtful and beautifully written, examining lost lives, chances and choices

—— Daily Mail

A sort of historical treatise follows, one that is devoid of the kind of colourful details which abound in stereotypical lottery daydreams, but which nevertheless endears the reader to Andy and his cause, and sets up an enticing conclusion'

—— Sunday Business Post

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