Acknowledgements

While Less Than Perfect is a work of fiction, those who are familiar with recent Irish history and politics will be able to recognise that I drew on the Omagh bombing and the remarkable achievements of the Omagh Support & Self Help Group for inspiration. Professor Jonathan O’Reilly, Caitlin, Josh, Liam and all the other characters in the book are completely fictional, but their loss, grief, bravery, tenacity and ultimate triumph reflect the extraordinary strength of the Omagh people.

Thanks to Jacqueline Gabb, Sam Bartlett, Matthew Long-more, Stephen Cohen and Aleisha Davis for your technical assistance. Without your knowledge and experience certain parts of this book would not have been possible. I’m hugely grateful (and quick to add that any mistakes are totally my own!).

Thanks to my usual gang of readers, Rob Carroll, Amanda Longmore, Ann Riordan and Brian Cook (my fabulous, multi-talented agent). As always, your recommendations have made this book much better than I could ever achieve on my own.

Thanks to Cate Paterson, publishing director at Pan Macmillan, for your wonderful ongoing support, and a big, enormous thanks to my publisher Alex Nahlous for your excellent suggestions and editing. I feel extremely lucky to have had you working on my book (and I promise I don’t hold that massive you-know-what change against you!). Thanks, too, to Clara Finlay for caring enough to go through the manuscript word by word and doing such a scrupulous copy edit.

Thanks also to Dianne Blacklock and Liane Moriarty, fellow authors and great sounding boards on all things book-related. Dianne and Liane and I like each other so much that we produce a periodical newsletter called Book Chat. If you would like to subscribe, just go to my website: www.bercarroll.com. And check out Dianne and Liane’s books – you will love them.

Being one of six, I have lots of my own ‘big family’ experiences to draw from. But being one of eight and thirteen has a lot more street cred – so thanks to Jeanie Edwards and Stephen Cox for allowing me to steal some of your hilarious anecdotes.

Finally, thanks to Conal McKeever (sorry for cornering you with questions at all those parties), and to Erin Downey, Donna Heagney, Matt O’Mahony, Orla Quilligan and Gillian Henery. And thanks to all my readers. I hope you like this book. I’ve wanted to write about the North of Ireland for a long, long time.