★ The story revolves around a transnational blended family: Susanna leaves her homeland of France with her eldest son for a new life in Britain, building a comfortable middle-class household, yet she never truly fits into her adopted country. As the two boys grow up, they develop utterly opposing beliefs about manhood and the duties of being a man; a homecoming farewell trip then ignites fraternal conflict through a sudden accusation, and the family's equilibrium collapses.

★ Though its main thread is the fierce conflict between adult men, at its core the book is about healing intergenerational psychological wounds within a family. The plot is woven from one candid, true-to-life domestic scene after another, and the push and pull of family tensions brims with dramatic force — pairing literary quality with commercial readability.

Some rifts cannot be bridged — when the two brothers decide to go to war, not even a mother's love can stop them.

To escape a harrowing predicament, Susanna flees her native France with her infant son, Adam. In Britain she remarries and bears another boy, Ricky. Although the comfortable family life gives her the stability she desperately needs, Susanna still feels like an outsider.

Adam and Ricky hold starkly different views on what it means to be a man. But Susanna's mother is dying, and she wants to take the whole family to France one last time to say goodbye. Thrown together, the brothers' priorities align and they begin to find common ground — until Adam is accused of rape.

As the family falls apart, Ricky's wife, Eily, bears the brunt of this lethal fraternal strife.

Seán Farrell

Born and raised in the Irish Midlands. After graduating from the University of Cambridge, he spent fifteen years in France. Besides writing, he works as a freelance editor. He lives in Sligo with his wife, the novelist Aisling Rahill, and their four children. His debut novel, The Watchdog's Frog, was published in 2025 to wide acclaim and was shortlisted for the Irish Book Award. The Best Boy in the World is his second novel.