The rest just follows - Glenn Patterson

First of September 1974. Craig Robinson is starting secondary school.
Instinct tells him he needs to keep his head down. The last thing he
needs, therefore, is someone carrying the name St John Nimmo to be sent
to sit beside him, but that is what he gets.

Across town Maxine
Neill is starting her own new school, convinced that she shouldn't be
there at all. She should be where Craig and St John are. Not that she
has met either of them yet. Though meet them she will, and more.

Their
lives and hers - and the lives of the entire Nimmo family - become
entwined as pre-teens turn to teens, turn to twenties and thirties, turn
inevitably to the eff decades and they go about the business of
filling the spaces vacated by the generations that went before. It's
called growing up, never mind that most of the time it feels like making
it up as they go along, and sometimes like fucking up completely.

Around
them meanwhile the world happens: to be specific Belfast happens, for
good or occasionally very ill indeed. These are the circumstances life
has contrived for them. What are they to do but deal with it?