The distinctive characteristic of our ‘first’ novel, that which makes it what it is, is not so much its idea, revolutionary as that may be, as its imitation of the speaking voice engaged in the telling of a tale. The model will be exemplary for the reader who has read widely in Irish fiction: it is a voice heard over and over again, whatever its accent, a voice with a supreme confidence in its own histrionics, one that shares with its audience a shared ownership of the told tale and all that it implies: a taste for anecdote, an unshakeable belief in the value of human action, a belief that life may be adequately encapsulated into stories that require no reference, no qualifications beyond their own selves.