Patrick McCabe is led astray in 'The Stray Sod Country'

McCabe couldn't be more accurate about the radically chaning face of Irish village life. When I returned to Maynooth, in Kildare, after an absence of forty years, I couldn't believe my eyes. The place was full of fast food joints and estate agents. The field where we played was now occupied by a shopping mall with apartments above that only the wealthy could afford. To be sure the castle was still there and so, too, was St. Patrick's College, but I was warned by one local to be on my guard when visiting the cemetery where my grandparents were laid to rest because "there are all sorts of villains out there." Change is inevitable. Accepting a good deal of it, however, isn't always easy.