Synopsis

A haunting story of family, survival, and the ghosts an estate refuses to bury. On Dublin’s Ballymun estate, ghosts don’t stay dead — they get painted on walls, sung from balconies, and chased down canals. When Niamh O’Callaghan comes back home, she finds her family split and her name dragged into rumours of her long-dead father, Seamus. Kids chant his return, neighbours whisper about his laugh, and someone in a long coat is leaving cans and scratch cards on her doorstep. With her brothers slipping toward the Nolans’ grip, Bridie Nolan stirring trouble with her choir of fear, and Declan running schemes in the shadows, Niamh has to hold her family together while the estate itself pulls them apart. But is Seamus really back, or just another story Ballymun tells itself to keep the nights loud? The answer may not matter. What matters is who the O’Callaghans choose to be when the singing stops. Raw, dark, and unflinchingly real — What’s Left of Us is a novel about family, memory, and the price of carrying a name through a place that never forgets. The O’Callaghans are no strangers to trouble. Back on Ballymun’s estate, they find themselves dragged into a storm of rumours, threats, and debts tied to the ghost of their father, Seamus. Graffiti claims he lives. Kids chant his name from balconies. A man in a long coat stalks the underpass, laughing in a voice too familiar. Pint cans and scratch cards are left at their door — part warning, part welcome. For Niamh, returning home means holding together siblings already fracturing: Darren, pulled into Declan Nolan’s schemes; Shane, dreaming up disasters with stolen trolleys; Connor, stuck as lookout for every mistake; and Kelly, fierce as ever, keeping the roof over them even as the estate drags it down. Bridie Nolan wants quiet she can tax, Declan wants loyalty he hasn’t earned, and the estate itself seems to want a ghost more than truth. As fires burn by the canal and fists fly on the pitch, the O’Callaghans must decide whether to pay the price Friday demands, or write their own ending. When the reckoning comes, it isn’t about whether Seamus is alive or dead. It’s about what’s left of them — the scraps they can still call family, and the story they choose to carry forward.

Book Info