Summary

The narrator accompanies Ciaran when he heads to the Wicklow Mountains an hour west of Dublin to pay his annual post-Christmas visit with his Irish father, Peter. Ciaran has never forgiven the father for abandoning his Danish family when Ciaran was only 7 to return to Ireland. The visit is awkward, tense. The refined Ciaran is unimpressed by his father’s outdoorsy lifestyle in the remote hill country, his clothes grubby, his appearance unkempt. The visit is short. The narrator, who so relies on her father, struggles to understand how Ciaran has made the absence of his father something like a presence.

By March and the annual office staff party, the narrator, chafing against the restrictions imposed by Ciaran, is ready to party, to have what she terms a “big messy night” (193). She wears a clingy dress. She hits the open bar with...