Margaret O'Shea never thought she'd find herself praying for the life of an English soldier. But with her grandson Eoin fighting in Iraq, Margaret can't do anything but say the rosary and hope that he comes home unscathed. His fiancée Katarzyna is a good Catholic girl, even if she goes to Nottingham's Polish church rather than its Irish one.
What Margaret doesn't know is that Kathy's way of coping with Eoin's absence goes beyond prayer or reading horoscopes. Her friend David has been studying Chaos Magic to distract himself from his new post-PhD career selling figurines of rat men to acne-ridden teenagers and wants Kathy to participate in his Rite of Internet Love.
But everyone gets more chaos than they bargained for when a video of a wounded Iraqi and a soldier who looks a lot like Eoin starts circulating.
This is a sharp, wry and moving debut novel about love, faith and what normal people do when they don't have any of the answers.
.jpg)
