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'Ooh, Coupla!' she squealed, laughing at them. She often used words from her other language, and 'Coupla' sounded like
cúpla, her word for twins. The twins were only four at the time. 'The two of you are rogues, so you are!'
Kate and Dan are twins. When they were three, their mother Ana walked into the sea. Cormac, their dad, and Mrs Janey who looked after them while he was away, both tried their best to comfort them, but they still missed her.
The story begins when they meet the strange Ms Cliona, who lures them to the Underworld on dolphins, surrounded by a cocoon of white light.
Bewildered, they are forced to go through challenge after challenge on wondrous and enchanting islands, where they meet powerful ancient beings known as Síoga. Most of the Síoga are kind. Some are nasty. One, however, is like a mother to them, and they begin to wonder if Ana has really died, or if she is a powerful Síog who is 5,000 years old.
About the author
I was born in London in 1950 to Irish parents from Co Laois and Co Sligo. The north London of the 1950s was an enchanting, if in retrospect dangerous, playground for children, and I frequently escaped the confines of the family house to play in the bomb-sites in Highgate.
This experience was the germ of my novel The Water Star.
In 1956 the family settled in Ireland near Wexford town, but moved a few years later to Hollyfort in north Wexford. This picturesque landscape, featuring Croghan mountain and Annagh Hill, and the Bann River, features in the three novels which make up The Bann River Trilogy.
Apart from three years in Barcelona in the mid-seventies, I've lived in Dublin since 1971, where I have been a full time poet and novelist since 1979. My next work, due in 2018, will be non-fiction, provisionally entitled 'Histories of The Irish.'
