'Dooneen' by Keith Ridgway - from Burgess Park to revolutionary Dublin

I loved Keith Ridgway's novel Dooneen, set in an alternative present version of Dublin where housing struggles are intensifying towards some kind of uprising. The story actually starts though in Southwark with two men walking from the River Thames (including a drink at the Angel in Rotherhithe), through Southwark Park and on to their home in Havil Street SE5. The next day the lovers are separated when one of them enters a mysterious portal in Burgess Park and steps out into Blessington Street Basin park in Dublin. There are some other understated fantastical elements, and some comical ones, but this is also a highly believable imagining of revolutionary escalation and state repression, told through a tenderly-drawn cast of characters and mostly from the point of view of a writer never quite understanding what he is caught up in.The title references the folk song which I got to know through Christy Moore and Planxty, 'the Cliffs of Dooneen', a song from the perspective of somebody…