A Secret Map of Ireland

Book excerpt: Olivia Silver directs this coming-of-age indie drama in which a family begins a 3,000 mile road trip to a new life in California. Whisked away by their father Tom (John Hawkes) in the dead of night from their home in New England, twelve-year-old Greta (Ryan Simpkins), her elder sister Caroline (Kendall Toole), and younger brother Nat (Ty Simpkins), find themselves crammed into the family's beat-up station wagon on a cross-country journey to Arcadia, where their father has a new job. Told that their mother will be meeting them there, an initially wary Greta, making her own journey of self-discovery, begins to have her suspicions that is something is wrong, when, with the journey becoming ever more claustrophobic, her father's demeanour descends from a cheery, day-trip dad to that of a belligerently tense hothead, ready-to-snap at any moment.