The launch of John Toomey’s new novel ‘Slipping’, published by Dalkey Archive Press, takes place in Hodges Figgis bookshop on March 22.

The event starts at 6pm with a brief reading from the author, followed by an interview with John O’Brien, founder of Dalkey Archive Press, and Tom O’ Neill, whose latest novel with The Press came out in January.

Copies of Toomey’s book will be available for purchase, plus wine, soft drinks, and snacks before the reading and interview.

When middle-aged school teacher Albert Jackson catches
a glimpse of the infinite universe, and his own tiny insignificance, he cannot shake himself free of regret for a life all but squandered. In a blind and demented attempt to salvage something of himself, he sets off, half-lucidly, on a libertine mission to reclaim life, to live it exclusively on his own terms. But the wild and sinister crime he plots, compromised by delusion, sets him on a path to irreversible destruction.

Incarcerated after his crime at the once prestigious Reil
Institute, Albert employs the guile of local novelist Charlie Vaughan to tell his story in a bid to make spiritual and cosmic amends. In documenting Albert’s crime, Charlie drives the narrative onward and backward, forcing Albert to confront the reality of
what he’s done.

Slipping is a darkly humorous novel about life and love, ambition, disappointment, and the cost of committing the unforgivable. The Irish Times named Slipping among its ‘Books to Look Out For in 2017’.

John Toomey is the author of three novels, Sleepwalker (2008), Huddleston Road (2012), and now Slipping (2017), all available from Dalkey Archive Press. He grew up in Dublin but went to university in London, where he lived for five years. He now resides in Dublin where he teaches at Clonkeen College.

Dalkey Archive Press is a publisher of fiction, poetry, and literary criticism in Illinois in the United States, Dublin, and London, specialising in the publication or republication of lesser known, often avant-garde works.