Winner of The Polari Prize Chosen for World Book Night 2017 Chosen as City Reads Brighton 2016 Shortlisted for The Authors' Club Best First Novel Award 2016 Finalist for The People's Book Prize 2016 Shortlisted for The Guardian's Not The Booker Prize 2015 ELLE Magazine Best Books of 2015 Irish Independent Books of the Year Wales Arts Review Best of 2015 The Reading Agency Staff Picks Best of 2015 Gransnet Christmas Pick 2015 Book of The Month: The Tablet, BBC Radio, Ulster Tatler Longlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award Mickey Donnelly is smart, which isn’t a good thing in his part of town. Despite having a dog called Killer and being in love with the girl next door, everyone calls him ‘gay’. It doesn’t help that his best friend is his little sister, Wee Maggie, and that everyone knows he loves his Ma more than anything in the world. He doesn’t think much of his older brother Paddy and really doesn’t like his Da. He dreams of going to America, taking Wee Maggie and Ma with him, to get them away from Belfast and Da. Mickey realises it’s all down to him. He has to protect Ma from herself. And sometimes, you have to be a bad boy to be a good son. The Good Son has been called 'outstanding' by Toby Litt, 'a work of genius' by Pulitzer Prize-winning Robert Olen Butler and McVeigh 'a wildly important new talent' by Laura van den Berg who Salon calls 'the best young writer in America'.