One of the most impressive features of Moore's canon has been his ability to keep from repeating himself. Over and over again he has found fresh inventions which have developed his novelistic skills and enabled him to explore his obsessive themes and preoccupations in ways that have made for an increasingly complex continuity between old and new. (p. 53)

[His] novels may be grouped according to their settings which, since they correspond to the peregrinations of Moore's self-imposed exile from Ireland, are with one or two exceptions chronological divisions as well.

Four of the novels have been set in Ireland, three in his native Belfast. The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne …, his first and best known book, is still the standard against which his subsequent performances are judged. This was followed … by another Belfast novel, The Feast of Lupercal, a somewhat slighter work ('a little bit too quiet' in...