Nights Beneath The Nation, by Denis Kehoe, Serpent’s Tail; £7.99

DENIS KEHOE’S debut novel is a first-person narrative of a disaffected immigrant returned to his native Ireland.

Forced to leave for New York following the tragic end to his heady dreams of love and romance as a young gay man in 1950s Dublin, Daniel Ryan is back in a city he barely recognises.

In parallel chapters, he recounts his provincial upbringing and escape to the big city. Life as a lowly clerk is stirred up for Daniel by a chance encounter with the elegant bohemian, Maeve. “You are one of us,” she tells him. He is introduced to the theatrical world and its coterminous, subterranean gay scene. Daniel begrudgingly accepts his homosexuality and embarks on an exciting adventure among “this secret sect I had stumbled upon.”

Intoxicated by the pleasure of this forbidden flesh, he is thrilled to find that what he was brought up to believe as perverse could possibly be acceptable. “It was to live alone with an unnameable desire, a lust, a love..... and then realise, accept, understand, that there were others, so many others.”

What Daniel hadn’t accepted was that he could fall in love, which he does, with the flamboyant, highly strung university student, Anthony. Kehoe’s assured narrative describes the intense profundity of the love affair, in which the young couple forget the conventions of the day and plan a life together. A family’s intervention sets in motion a series of events culminating in tragedy. Dublin’s 1950’s gay, intellectual pub scene is juxtaposed with the modern city of cafes, clubs, centres and saunas. The mature man despises the out-and-proud gay vista as much as his younger self resented the ostracising of his kind. “We weren’t forcing ourselves on the world. We had two worlds... a dignity, a warmth and a humanity, you won’t find in those cesspits of fags you find in every city.”