Economic parable seen in Irish novel

When Irish novelist Dermot Bolger began writing his highly praised novel Tanglewood, the booming Celtic Tiger economy was still roaring its loudest.

The once poverty-stricken island whose biggest export had been its people was growing at such a rate that by 2005 the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said it was wealthier than Switzerland.

But the sudden riches were to prove illusory. And Bolger's book about two couples' doomed plan to profit from its rocketing property market by building a house in their gardens is a powerful parable about a society that "had completely lost its bearings".