Friendship, love and isolation - both self-imposed and involuntary - and the quiet bravery of one woman are at the heart of this new novel. The time is the recent past, a period of unprecedented re-examination in Ireland. Diverse but tightly knit, the men and women of this novel are related to each other by family ties or by the simple fact of living in the same Dublin street and their skilfully interlinked stories reflect the pressures - and pleasures - generated by rapidly changing social values. Flexibly shifting from straight narrative to a chain of lively, intimate correspondence, A Glassful of Letters is a novel for our times.