Beyond the Pale

A dead author, a sprawling, unpaginated manuscript in longhand, and a mysterious editor struggling to unravel the narrative it contains ...

Beyond the Pale is a radically inventive literary novel set in 20th-century rural Ireland. At its heart is Bo, a gifted foster child growing up amid a disorienting flux of language, memory, and shifting identities.

Framed by the discovery of a deceased author's longhand manuscript, the narrative unfolds in nonlinear, polyphonic episodes echoing Ireland's oral tradition. With two names, two languages, and a makeshift household, Bo's voice begins to cohere from the sounds around him - prayers, songs, scraps of radio and conversation - as he dreams of escaping the constraints of the Pale (the historical base of English rule in Ireland).

Steeped in Irish vernacular and reminiscent of the experimental styles of Joyce and Beckett, Beyond the Pale is a dense, lyrical meditation on place, selfhood, and the creative force of language.

Patrick Healy lives in Amsterdam, where he is currently at work on his next novel, Fatal Fragments.