Publishers Weekly: "A hilarious and heartbreaking tale."

Irish playwright and journalist Roche debuts with the hilarious and heartbreaking tale of a Dubliner who takes a job helping a teenage boy suffering from muscular dystrophy on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Trevor, the black sheep in a family of academics, has dropped out of film school and left Ireland after his mother's death. Awash in the chaos of Manhattan, he answers an ad to care for Ed, the wheelchair-bound, teenage son of a sedentary, morbidly obese mother and an emotionally stunted judge. Trevor's world is filled with lies and fantasies, but as his relationship with Ed evolves from caretaker to companion, and Ed's condition worsens, Trevor's emotional feints fall away, forcing him to do a bit of maturing. There's a wonderful cast of supporting characters--a Jamaican cook, an attractive physical therapist, the street-level rabble who occupy the bars and parks of New York City--but it's Roche's balancing of Trevor's complexities with a quick wit, a sharp ear, and a deft understanding of how humans suffer that steals the show. (July)