The Deposition of Father McGreevy, by Brian O'Doherty (Arcadia, £6.99 in UK)

I badly wanted this book to work. A good priest, after all, is a good start (when did you last read about a good priest?); and the struggle to preserve the existence of a remote mountain village in Co Kerry is bound to strike a disillusioned Celtic Tiger as an appealing proposition. But nothing about Brian O'Doherty's second novel worked for me: not the unconvincing frame in which the story is placed; not the bald, flat, Paddywhack language of the priest's "deposition", which takes up most of the narrative; and certainly not the use of, God help us, sheep-shagging as the basis for social catastrophe. As for the notion that an Irish mountain village could be caught in the grip of snow and ice for two solid winters in a row, to the extent of whiteouts and permafrost, is it just me, or is this a geographical probability along the lines of hell freezing over?