Book Review: Alan McMonagle: Ithaca

Ithaca is set in Ireland in the summer of 2009, when 11-year-old Jason Lowry is preoccupied with thoughts of the father he has never known. In the meantime, his alcoholic mother is busy entertaining her latest boyfriend and indulging her fondness for joyriding.
Jason escapes to the Swamp: a mysteriously rising pool of fetid water on the outskirts of his town. There he meets a girl, a being as lost and damaged as himself… and with even less regard for reality. Together, they conjure exotic adventures – from ancient Egypt to the search for Ithaca, home of Odysseus. But what begin as innocent flights of fancy soon become forays into hazardous territory.
Echoing The Butcher Boy, this superbly written, darkly comic debut from Galway writer Alan McMonagle is the story of how far a lonely boy will go to find what he’s looking for, and how in searching for what we’ve lost, we risk losing sight of what we have.