About the book: 2008 / “Green. Grass. Grace." is the striking debut of the young American writer Sean McBride. The novel received recognition from both readers and critics, immediately becoming a bestseller. The prose of the life of poor Irish neighborhoods, lost somewhere in the thicket of the concrete-brick jungle of Philadelphia, is shown through the eyes of a cheerful fourteen-year-old teenager Henry Tobias Toohey, who is trying, as much as possible, to brighten the life of himself and those around him with motley strokes of smiles and small joys. Henry already admits in the first lines that he loves “God, rock and roll and Grace McClain,” and later on in the pages of the novel these three pillars of his being are given equal attention. The author and his hero skillfully and unobtrusively rework the prose of life into real poetry. Perhaps, J.D. Salinger’s famous character would have been born forty to fifty years later, and from Irish parents at that... However, we’ll leave it to the reader to draw parallels on the fertile soil of this juicy text.