The leading character in this accomplished, thoughtful and deceptively understated novel is Mickey McKenna, formerly of Marino, but for over 30 of his 59 years a resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he owns a filling station and garage. Perhaps every generation of emigrants is to one degree or another a lost generation, but Mickey, with his modestly successful business, neutral but steady marriage, and well-kept home in an inner-city neighbourhood, appears to be a lot less lost than the numerous contemporaries of his who litter the local bars and who people his memories. And most of what he has not been able to accept or adapt to in American life has been pretty effectively buried by years of expert assiduous gardening - which provides one of the novel's numerous excursions into loving detail (cars and the city of Cambridge and environs are others), conveyed in writing that has the delightfully resonant modesty and expertise of the hand-crafted about it.

Neither bum nor lace-curtain Irish, AOH or Yankee Doodle, Mickey - vigilant, defensive, limited, prejudiced, sober, stubborn, a loner - holds his ground as best he can. He no longer has any attachment to Dublin or Ireland, and has no great love for the way of life around him. As a character study, Nighthawk Alley is a portrait of that vanishing species, blue-collar man, in the background to which there is more blue than the subject is aware of.

But the vivid and engrossing portrait of Mickey is by no means all there is to this brief, expertly-packed novel. Into Mickey's life come two characters who together unwittingly nudge him towards attaining a perspective on himself and what he amounts to. He knows he is not one of the types in Edward Hopper's celebrated painting, Nighthawks (the one of a disparate group in the illuminated wedge of an all-night diner). But he learns that these are types he recognises and that he is not to turn his back on them. (The temptation to belabour the art-and-life theme is firmly resisted.)

The first newcomer to make a difference to Mickey is Fintan, who shortly after his arrival brings the other important influence, Lionel, on the scene. Mickey takes on both men as mechanics against his better judgment. Fintan is a free-spririted, opinionated, wisecracking native of Donegal. His open-minded, practical attitude to the street people who regularly pass by the garage prods Mickey into realising that casualties and need know no boundaries and that the boundaries he had been maintaining were artificial and self-defeating.

Thanks to Fintan, Mickey is able to cross over - into the past, into himself, even across the river to see Boston afresh. In a sense, Fintan is the child who is father to the man. But Fintan is a bird-ofpassage, and when he leaves abruptly Mickey has a much more substantial adjustment to make to Lionel.

Relaxed, hard-working, trustworthy, Lionel resembles Fintan in his open-mindedness and is like Mickey because his roots are in the local community. The problem for Mickey is that Lionel is black. He never had anything to do with a black person before; on the contrary, he was at pains not to give them an inch. Lionel is no saint. But he is very solid, very grounded and down to earth, characteristics which to Mickey the gardener are values constantly sought after.

Maybe Lionel taking Mickey for a St Patrick's Day drink in a black shebeen lays on a bit thickly Mickey's change of attitude to blacks. But the scene acts as an effective antidote to the chill loneliness of the Hopper painting, as well as consolidating the quiet but persistent reversal of stereotypes which, along with its direct style and sophisticated structure, make this first novel a read not only to relish but to reflect upon.

George O'Brien teaches literature at Georgetown University, Washington, DC