One day, when John was a boy in rural Ireland, a classmate read out a poem he’d written in Brother Alphonsus Keane’s English class. John, long grown into a ruthless man who calls himself an accountant but whose dealings are very much on the shady side of that business, somehow recalls the words to the first verse of the poem, a portrait of the Norman invasion of their homeland: “Armoured they came from the east/From a low and quiet sea./We were a naked rabble, throwing stones;/They laughed, and slaughtered us.”
John kicks the poet in the balls for his trouble; a brutal act that augurs a brutal life. That his schoolmate’s poem gives this evocative novel its title lends menace to words that might otherwise seem peaceful, calming. But for the characters in the book, there is little peace to be had, and at its outset that low and quiet sea brings death and danger as surely as the Normans did.
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