This collection of 18 short stories charts the last 50 years of Irish history from a very human, frequently comic, often quirky, and always interesting perspective. The Cuban Missile Crisis is examined from the perspective of a gang of boys in a small, Irish village; the experience of Balkan immigrants in modern Ireland is told through the relationship of a young Albanian with an injured pigeon; three middle aged strangers meet on a train and reflect on their lives but almost as much can be told from what they hide, as much as what they say and then there's Touching Death, a young boy's first morbid encounter ends in farce.