In this slim, attractive collection of short stories, Harry Crosbie colourfully describes life in Dublin in the 1960s. These funny and poignant pieces are told from the perspective of a teenage boy working in Dublin’s docklands and illuminate an older Dublin that will be familiar to many readers. Written during the lockdown of 2020, writes from the heart and will charm and delight with tales of docklands life.

‘These wonderfully direct and vivid tales catch the essence of Dublin life half a century ago. They are by turns rambunctious and touching, clear-eyed and accepting, warm though never sentimental, and frequently hilarious. Harry Crosbie has done his native city, and its natives, more than proud … Harry Crosbie knows how to tell a tale, how to evoke a scene, how to sketch in a vivid and unforgettable character. His work is never sentimental, frequently funny, and always affecting.’ JOHN BANVILLE

‘It’d be self-congratulating to say that if Crosbie-the-writer didn’t exist, we’d have to invent him. It’d also be hopeless, because we couldn’t do it. We couldn’t manufacture a writer who knows all the weird, grainy and hilarious stuff Crosbie knows, & magically combine that with the civilized urge to set it all down for others’ delectation. Mark Twain was that sort of writer. Ring Lardner was. Nelson Algren. It’s heartening to know Crosbie’s is not yet a dying art.’ RICHARD FORD

‘Could Wilde have built the Point? No but he’d have loved to have played it. Could Joyce have started Vicars Street? No, but he would have loved to have got up and sung in it. Yeats did manage to start the Abbey, which is fair enough, but it’s doubtful whether he or anyone else could have built the Docklands … But Harry Crosbie did all that and more and then out of the blue he turns out to be a fabulous writer. Harry Crosbie is a wonderful writer and this book is the evidence.‘ BOB GELDOF

‘He is the man who turned a disused railway station into Ireland’s biggest music venue which some of us still call The Point. But if Harry Crosbie has his way, he will also be remembered as a writer.’ IRISH TIMES