It's all blarney

Wild Grass is the story of a man returning to his native land for the funeral of his mother. In Wild Grass the man is Irish, the setting Ireland. But Wild Grass is about all of us who are exiles. Arguably the world in the late 20th century is peopled with more exiles than ever before. Emigration and the condition of being an immigrant is a physical and mental state common to many in the contemporary world.

It is a twilight zone in which who we are, where we have come from and where we are going, obsess our daily existence. Where is "home"? Like those characters in It's All Blarney who, in their struggle to survive away from "home", find themselves weaving myths about the past, the "old country" and themselves. Maybe men and women cannot bear too much of the reality of exile? Some, like Mary Maginn, experience exile at home and only find the strength to survive it by keeping faith with a religion that promises a home elsewhere.

But there are no elsewheres for Comrade Brennan - his dreams of an ideal home for humanity appear to lie shattered at the end of the 20th century...