If Dostoyevsky had been born in Dublin this is the book he would have written. Noel Boyle, newly arrived in Dublin, is a man threatened by his past and petrified by his future, he aches for space and change, another run at things. Instead he runs into Fada, an utterly unreliable clown-like street performer, crazed by his own liberty and poetry. It turns into a dangerous collision for both of them. The Swing of Things is ablaze with the stories of lives lived and lost. One minute a contented father is hanging out the washing and next he is attempting to hang himself. Men are released from prison to find themselves in free-fall. Within the novel O'Reilly tells tales of everyday that become momentous and mythical in their retelling.