'My name is Justin Alexander Torquhil Edward Peregrine Montague, but my father calls me 'you little bollocks', or when he is in a good mood, 'old cock'. It's 1963 in a country house in west Wicklow during the heady summer of JFK's visit to Ireland. Turbulence is in the air as Justin is locked in combat with his angry and inebriate father. A dark and poignant comedy unfolds and progresses to winter as Kennedy is assassinated and Justin ends his oedipal struggle and comes of age. Replete with the perennial tensions between native and settler, servant and master, Camelot and Leinster House, this poignant tale concerns identity and first love, and the pain of a knowing child living amongst aliens. Told with the panache of Roddy Doyle crossed with J.D. Salinger, it conveys the spirit of a bygone age and the very present emotions of a fast-growing boy. It is a masterful debut novel. "A subtler kind of Irish eccentricity pervades The House of Slamming Doors. Set at the time of...