Jimmy carries a leather, black doctor’s bag around with him containing the rope he plans to hang himself with. He returns home to the fictional town of Ballylough to the cold austere beauty of West Cavan to seek salvation for sins committed in the past before saying goodbye.
Patrick McCabe (born 27 March 1955) is an Irish writer. Known for his mostly dark and violent novels set in contemporary—often small-town—Ireland, McCabe has been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, for The Butcher Boy (1992) and Breakfast on Pluto (1998), both of which have been made into films. Description above from the Wikipedia article Patrick McCabe (novelist), licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.