A Sort of Homecoming

After a six-month "transcontinental lost weekend" spent blowing his grandfather's legacy, Ireland's self-proclaimed Greatest Resource returns to Dublin armed only with his beloved leather jacket, a dwindling supply of Eurocheques, and a truly monstrous ego. Dublin, however, has changed. It seems, in fact, as smoothly sophisticated as Iremonger himself. Shaken, Tom finds himself violating some precious Rules of Cool--collecting for charity, cheating during the Forty-Foot Swim in the frigid Irish Sea, and above all trying (and failing) to win back Mainie Doyle, the urbane and beautiful daughter of a supermarket magnate. As he fights for his spot atop Dublin's trendy new elite, can it be that Iremonger's future is finally catching up with him? A novel of pints and posterboys, ravers and priests, semtex and sensibility, Cremins's hilarious debut-part Less Than Zero, part Look Homeward, Angel-is as much about some very old truths as it is about the new Ireland.