Reviewed by James MoranQuercus, 265pp, £15.99)Tablet bookshop price £14.40 Tel 01420 592974 BarnabAs Kane HAS a herd of 43 cattle in the fields of Donegal. A fire in the byre in which his cows are housed kills every animal. Worse still, one of Kane’s most loyal friends attempts to save the burning livestock, and ends up dying in the blaze. The community turns against Kane, who is barred from the dead man’s funeral. His attempts to discover who set his farm alight have increasingly destructive consequences for him, his wife, and their teenage son, even though, in the manner of Oedipus Rex, Kane is warned to abandon his investigations.A joy of this book is the way Paul Lynch develops a distinctive poetic register to describe the anthropomorphic hostility of nature.