English Summary/英文概要： Sean O’Reilly’s second novel, set in contemporary Dublin, centres on two figures: Noel Boyle, a man threatened by his past and petrified by his future, and Fada, a clown-like street performer, crazed by his own liberty and poetry. Boyle tries to start again, to erase his history. He aches for space and change, another run at things. Fada - dangerously unreliable and excitable - is relentlessly rooted in the present, hardly able to catch breath within his own chaos of fictions. THE SWING OF THINGS is ablaze with the stories of lives lived and lost: stories of the everyday that become momentous and mythical in their retelling. A girl is found drowned - who is she? Russians in exile are holed up, terrified of deportation. Men are released from prison to find themselves in free-fall. One minute a contented father is hanging out the washing and the next he is attempting to hang himself. A couple fall in love and see a fleeting, illusory glimpse of a future together. A beautiful, life-affirming meditation on the theme of release and what it is that keeps us tethered to the world. Praise for his previous book, LOVE AND SLEEP: "Echoes of Sartre’s NAUSEA, Dostoevsky’s UNDERGROUND MAN and the narrator of Knut Hamsun’s HUNGER this is a truthful emotion-driven European novel by a writer who happens to come from Derry. It is also by far the finest new fiction from the younger Irish writers." The Irish Times " One of the very finest contemporary writers." Alan Warner "LOVE AND SLEEP confirms that that much-fated, falsely-recognised and poorly imitated figure, the True Stylist, genuinely does exist. This twenty-first century picaresque is, authentically and mercifully, unique." Niall Griffiths

Chinese Summary/中文概要： ISBN: 0571221300 ； 320页； 本书有需要，可提供翻译支持 Noel Boyle 新来都柏林。对过去的恐惧，对未来的不知所措。他渴望有一份空间，人生有所变化。他认识了Fada---一个靠不住的街头艺人，陶醉于自己的诗歌与自由。他们之间会有怎样的危险冲突…… 版权销售情况： UK & US: Faber (2004.2出版); France: Bourgois; Holland: Meulenhoff.