He Used to Be Me

Meet ‘Daft Matt’, the Mayo man at the heart of this gorgeously written, form-bending tale. Matt, who has been told to get his head out of the clouds since he was a boy, has a hump the size of Nephin mountain from a lifetime of looking down.

We first meet him wandering the streets of Castlebar in search of ‘Devil’s feet’ – the claw marks of the jackdaws who have spoken to him since he was a boy. He pretends not to hear the cruel remarks of those he passes, people who will never understand what’s going on in his head because they don’t take the trouble to ask.

In extraordinary prose, Walsh Donnelly imagines the inner life of Daft Matt, from the loss of his twin brother as a child, through the halcyon days of early manhood, to the shocking aftermath of a horse-riding accident that would leave him in care for another 30 years.