Foreigners Within: Identity, Belonging and the Migrant Other in Barry McCrea's The First Verse and Sean O'Reilly's The Swing of Things

This chapter considers two novels that address the experience of loss of certainty in the Celtic Tiger period, where the promises of consumerism and prosperity are not matched by a tolerance or recognition of the intrinsic otherness of Irishness itself. In Barry McCrea's The First Verse and Sean O'Reilly's The Swing of Things, we see different manifestations of a character's sense of being an outsider in Dublin city. The chapter argues that, in different ways, both novels point to the need to disrupt the homogeneity of what it is to be considered Irish to allow for a true intercultural encounter.