Mrs Griffin feels out of place in an overcrowded house in the back streets of Belfast. Unemployment has brought her son Johnny and his family to the brink of eviction and it is only by giving up her home in the country and moving in with the family that she can give them a chance of survival. The consequences of the grandmother's harsh uprooting reverberate through the novel, and as relationships within the family change and develop, her sacrifice brings tragedy and, unexpectedly, redemption. A powerful and unsentimental account of working-class life in Belfast during the Great Depression of the 1930s by one of our most influential Irish writers.