THE exuberantly original A Man Who Was Somebody follows Maurice O'Callaghan's 2005 A Day for the Fire and Other Stories.That eclectic, novelistic compendium created a frisson for its evocation of a West Cork landscape as transcendently vivid and psychic as it was historical, naturalistic and social.

Here, we're offered a crafted, resonating, relevant and genredistinct novel that manifests its composer's abiding relationship to the physical fabric of his birthplace but which also pushes the creative envelope farther out into the mainstream of now. The contemporaneous, human panorama is revealed through tragedy, high comedy and the silent, internal life. Such qualities are wrapped in a bold and enticing weave of elemental imagery, human and otherwise, that permeates like a watermark.

All of nature and personality is here, foibles and worth, realised by O'Callaghan's lyrically descriptive facility.

The central character, Bill Cassidy, is a self-made businessman with a portfolio of top-drawer property interests, a distanced wife, ostensibly fullgrown progeny and time for contemplating a rising and questionable trajectory through the prism of his past. With age's abrasive and aggressive selfseeking edges softened though not eroded, there resides in his breast a more sorrowful frame of reference. Such regret is bittersweet placing Cassidy in a selfcontemplation of satisfying depth.

Another character emerging strongly from the page is capricious lifelong friend and 'anchorite' Joey Harrison, who is at once boisterous, flawed and great fun. Cassidy's nemesis is the boldly drawn Martha Williams . . . who is both independent woman and femme fatale yet no caricature.

The novel's themes are those of lost love, shame, divided loyalty, regret and wasted time. But the tale is, often comically, also carried by the treachery, greed and mendacious jealousy of the rank-and-file gombeenery.

Cassidy is a subject of scrutiny for a tribunal in Dublin investigating Provisional IRA money laundering. In this he's the target of vested interests and is vulnerable despite the charmed insouciance of his ace-in-the-hole barrister Cantwell 'Fada'.

Strands of the past and present dovetail and engage through the novel's flowing action. There's fascination and uncertainty surrounding the central characters and their lives in the consummately staged scenes of this undulating yet measured drama.

There is an astute intuition to O'Callaghan's canny insight into people. A motley gathering of souls, irredeemable or with a claim on the affections, emerge to satisfy the instinct for realism and something more magical.

Eileen McManus is central to the often mystically charged development of the story.

Elsewhere, George Conklin is the circle rounding and the spiritual and intellectual opposite of Bill.

Both men are nonetheless drawn to one another for something that carries huge significance in the denouement of a deepening and emotional tapestry. Eileen, though never quite physically 'there', in the classic manner of many a siren, is also an emotionally vital influence in the way she configures the seductive magical realism that's indelible upon these pages.

The author is evidently imbued with an innate lyricism couched in onomatopoeic cadence and his descriptions of detailed skill . . . as varied, for instance, as nautical nous or how to thatch a cottage using reeds . . . are totally captivating. These are effervescing, textured, handsome passages that prompt admiration. But it's the emotive, human dimension that ultimately carries the novel.

A Man Who Was Somebody is a topical work bristling with a vivacious narrative and inventive quality of expression. Whether read as a meditation on regret, as a mystery thriller or as a Celtic Tiger deconstruction, you'll be seduced by O'Callaghan's insightful, magical and finely constructed reality.