When Tom Murphy buys an old house and some land in a sleepy rural village he doesn't set out to become a developer – he just wants a quiet life. The local councillor and sometime auctioneer Joe Armstrong has different ideas; he believes that cash-strapped buyers from the city will move to Ashboyne in droves if somebody builds a housing estate on Manor farm. There is just the small problem of planning permission, but sure a few 'incentives' will solve that.
A bit of 'dropsy' also helps to move things along with the woman from the Safety Authority, and with anyone else from officialdom who gets in the way. The Prime Minister though is a different story; it isn't that he doesn't take bribes; it's just a matter of figuring out how much he will have to be given to get him to change a few tax laws.
Tom assembles a motley crew to develop the land and to get very rich in the process. The very flatulent Gasser Conway, the hirsute foreman 'Che' Byrne and 'Snips' the electrician help to lighten the days on site, and the Polish team of Lollix and Bollix works every daylight hour to get the houses built.
It's not all roses; looming over him is the spectre of the Peter Byrne's supply-demand curve, and his estranged father who wants to meet his two young grandsons. JP Shelton, who spends his vast fortune on 'hoors, helicopters and hoggets' wants to take over his business, and the phone company plans to build a mast on Bertie's Knob. You just get a feeling that this is all going to end badly.
This is John Mulligan's second novel and his fourth book; No Place Like Home is set in Celtic-Tiger Ireland, when common sense went out the window to make way for a bizzare "greed is good" philosophy that permeated all levels of business and government and made overnight millionaires of small-town developers with the right connections. This book sees the funny side of that strange time, and maybe helps to explain it too!
You couldn't make this stuff up!
John Mulligan is a freelance Irish journalist and travel writer who has written two novels to date as well as several short fiction pieces. One of his short stories "Hey, Jude" was selected for publication in the prestigious "Fish Anthology" in 2011, against competition from thousands of international writers. He is currently working on a book about Irish emigrants to Britain.
When Tom Murphy buys an old house and some land in a sleepy rural village he doesn't set out to become a developer – he just wants a quiet life. The local councillor and sometime auctioneer Joe Armstrong has different ideas; he believes that cash-strapped buyers from the city will move to Ashboyne in droves if somebody builds a housing estate on Manor farm. There is just the small problem of planning permission, but sure a few 'incentives' will solve that.
A bit of 'dropsy' also helps to move things along with the woman from the Safety Authority, and with anyone else from officialdom who gets in the way. The Prime Minister though is a different story; it isn't that he doesn't take bribes; it's just a matter of figuring out how much he will have to be given to get him to change a few tax laws.
Tom assembles a motley crew to develop the land and to get very rich in the process. The very flatulent Gasser Conway, the hirsute foreman 'Che' Byrne and 'Snips' the electrician help to lighten the days on site, and the Polish team of Lollix and Bollix works every daylight hour to get the houses built.
It's not all roses; looming over him is the spectre of the Peter Byrne's supply-demand curve, and his estranged father who wants to meet his two young grandsons. JP Shelton, who spends his vast fortune on 'hoors, helicopters and hoggets' wants to take over his business, and the phone company plans to build a mast on Bertie's Knob. You just get a feeling that this is all going to end badly.
This is John Mulligan's second novel and his fourth book; No Place Like Home is set in Celtic-Tiger Ireland, when common sense went out the window to make way for a bizzare "greed is good" philosophy that permeated all levels of business and government and made overnight millionaires of small-town developers with the right connections. This book sees the funny side of that strange time, and maybe helps to explain it too!
You couldn't make this stuff up!
John Mulligan is a freelance Irish journalist and travel writer who has written two novels to date as well as several short fiction pieces. One of his short stories "Hey, Jude" was selected for publication in the prestigious "Fish Anthology" in 2011, against competition from thousands of international writers. He is currently working on a book about Irish emigrants to Britain.