An Answer from Limbo

Plot

The central character in the book is Brendan Tierney, a young Irish writer living in New York City with his American wife and their two children. Tierney is working on his first novel. For him to write full-time, his wife must work; he invites his widowed mother over from Ireland to look after the children. Conflicts arise when the mother finds that her own lifestyle, values and sense of morality are at odds with what she sees in her son and daughter-in-law's home.

Robert Fulford, writing in Canada's The Globe and Mail, describes it as "a dazzlingly good story about a young novelist's angry need to write a masterpiece".

According to Denis Sampson it is "a novel about marital dissatisfaction that develops into a moral fable because the dilemmas in which these characters find themselves mirror a society in spiritual and cultural crisis".