Maurice Hannigan is eighty-four and has been widowed 2 years. He has one son, Kevin, who is an acclaimed writer who lives in the United States. As the story opens, Maurice is sitting in a bar in the nicest hotel in his Irish town. He has carefully planned out this evening. He makes a toast five times through the night, drinking alone for the most part, saluting the people who have been important in his life. While he's drinking, his unspoken narrative is addressed to his son.
It's clear that he and his son have not been close, and for many of those years, Maurice was disappointed that Kevin didn't follow his lead and become a farmer and a landowner. Kevin, if he could hear the narrative, would likely hear things about his father's life that he had never known‒how hard life was in general because of Maurice's family's poverty, how hard it was for him in school because of a learning disability (but he never had a name for it until more recently), how hard it was to have lost his beloved older brother to disease, the hard times he had when working for a rich man who had long ago owned this hotel, but back then, it was the man's house. And how hard it was when the rich man's son tormented him. There are many secrets. Maurice is not always likeable, but we can understand him. And wonder what lies ahead for him.
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