Sergeant Jim Field has the honour of supervising a small Irish town about to witness the visit of one of its most famous descendants. THE VISIT is an ode to 1963 Ireland, changing but in a remote way, which hardly impacts the lives of those in County Wexford, as shown in the lovely cover.

Young ne’er-do-well Patrick Hatten is the only remaining member of his family, apart from a brother who, older and braver, escaped to England. Eking out an existence on rabbits and garden vegetables, Patrick hopes for a job as a fishing guide. His young life will be thrown into turmoil in two ways. First, the richer neighbour starts sending covetous looks at the family's patch of land, and second, Patrick’s brother threatens to sell the farmhouse. There are echoes of the famous story ‘The Field.’

June 1963 saw John Kennedy travel to Ireland and visit the birthplace of the Kennedy clan near New Ross. This was also the harbour town from which the emigrants sailed to America. Wexford on the east coast largely didn’t get hit by the potato famine, but the lack of industrial jobs saw many people leave in hope of a better life. The folks in Wexford, depicted for us by Jim Field and his lovely wife Siobháin, marvel at rockets, a female cosmonaut, and television, black and white with nothing much to watch. Life was simpler back then, but not in a good way. While there isn’t much said about the role of the Church, women were still second-class citizens and health issues were a mystery. An elderly man could still die of privation and not be missed. Some readers, like me, may not enjoy seeing Ireland depicted thus. No doubt life was like that and progress trickled down slowly from cities.

Patrick is an anti-hero, a bit unstable, uneducated, and unwelcome with all the precautions being taken ahead of the big day. Some readers may draw comparisons that, no doubt intended, can feel in poor taste. But we know the visit went well, so we can be tourists ourselves in that Kennedy homestead today. Jim Field is well-intentioned throughout, but not exactly heroic, and has newly discovered a health problem which could, of course, crop up at just the wrong moment. Tensions mount, but the telling is quite slow, at the 1960s pace when few owned cars.

THE VISIT, which is Neil Tully’s first novel, gently harks back to a day when Ireland felt much bigger than it collectively was. I would have liked to see more of Kennedy, but the focus on New Ross and its changes reminds us how far we have travelled.