‘A distinctive voice in modern British fiction… By turns uproariously funny, bawdy, blasphemous, touching and sad.’ – Independent

Ralph has offended his family. He is at art school when he should be working his way up in an office and he is trying to protect his young cousin, a boy threatened by his own mother and her faith-healing pastor. It is difficult to do the right thing when you are opposed by the forces of God and the Law.

A Streak of Madness is a striking portrayal of the religious fervour and hypocrisies of repressed sexuality in a Northern Irish mill village. Compassionate and comic, Ian Cochrane portrays a family where madness runs on both sides and a world on the borders of sanity and respectability.

‘Packed and jumpy prose, full of sensations and surprises.’ – Times Literary Supplement

The layabout lads of a one-street Ulster village hang around its housing estates and factory gates looking for fun. They measure each other’s vital parts and chase the village maidens into the fields. Then Fergus, son of the factory manager, returns from boarding school and they initiate him into the anarchy of village life. When Fergus falls in love life begins to change.

Ian Cochrane’s novels are among the most original, and darkest, portrayals of life in Ulster’s villages and housing estates, depicting its absurdity and destructive sexuality.