Anthony C. West: The Ferret Fancier

Set in a border county just after the Irish Civil War, The Ferret Fancier tells the story of Simon Green, a boy in tune with nature, ‘asking himself to be himself without knowing how to be.’ Simon is sensitive, full of undiscovered fears and raw temptations, confused and disturbed by Irish history, tortured by young sexuality and by the simmering contentions in a farming community torn by sectarianism and poverty.
The novel traces his complex relationships with a ferret which hadn’t even the grace of fear and with a cast of finely drawn characters - the tyrannical schoolmaster, Rainey; clubfooted Thubby Knight, obsessed with sex in all its guises, filled with ultimately pathetic bravado; with Miss Gibson, Simon’s first love and first betrayer; and, above all perhaps, with the place itself in whose fecund landscape Simon finds his only consolations.