This book places "The Butcher Boy" in the overall context of Neil Jordan's career, and analyses the trajectory between his international and national films."The Butcher Boy" is perhaps the finest film to have come out of Ireland. Although it marks a clear break with the more banal canons of realism, it is nonetheless the most realistic of Irish films. It engages with the society and culture of modern Ireland with a wit and ferocity that denies the viewer any easy moral position. Cinema is often thought of as a purely visual art, but this film is adapted from a groundbreaking novel by a filmmaker who is himself a writer of prose fiction. In this present study, Colin MacCabe examines the process by which fiction becomes film, and writing becomes image.