We are in Northern Ireland in the troubled seventies. Sammy, Tommy, Barney and Patrick are four friends from Ardoyne, a run-down, majority-Catholic area of ​​north Belfast. They are also 'provos', members of the Provisional IRA who devoutly espouse the cause of a free and united Ireland. For them, initiation into violence and initiation into life are indistinguishable. Their friendships, their love affairs, their relationships with the family and the community always develop under the shadow of the armed struggle and a trail of victims and destruction, something that among their own gives them the status of rock stars, tough guys and mysterious with an aura of both gangsters and martyrs. They extort, drink, beat up, murder, read comics and listen to Perry Como. It's all fast-paced and dazzling. It's the good times. However, a maelstrom of deaths, betrayals, corruption, infighting and secrets that come to light threatens to put an end to the golden age of these IRA boys.

For the good times is a delirious, brutal and emotional novel, an absorbing read, with anarchic voltage, full of humor and tragedy, which at times can seem like Trainspotting or One of Ours, and which confirms David Keenan as an author in fullness of faculties.