The Family and Danny Casey

Sophie's father is a large, weary, working man, sceptical and unromantic, who dismisses her claims about the footballer as just another of her fanciful tales; his tiredness and disbelief embody the hard, unglamorous reality of the household. Her younger brother Derek and her mother fill out the picture of a modest, ordinary home. Danny Casey himself, the young Irish football star, never truly enters the story as a real presence; he exists mainly as the glittering object of Sophie's imagination. Though he plays in the match the family watches, the meeting and the promised reunion are Sophie's inventions. His importance lies not in anything he does but in what he represents to Sophie — the glamour, escape and excitement she cannot find in her own life. …