For Each A Road: A Powerful Book About Friendship and the Hard-Hitting Realities of Life
By Darren Donoghue
Friday 12th June 2026,16:39pm
Rarely have I come across a book that brings back so much nostalgia; while also exploring the emotions of one’s experiences growing up and relaying the hard-hitting realities of life. The Book For Each A Road has all of this, plus so much more.
For Each A Road is a powerful tale about friendships, bonds, relationships and everything else that comes with all of them. The book does pull at the heart strings, and it brought up a range of emotions for this reader.
The book follows the lives of JP, Jamie, Anto, and Deco, four young friends growing up in the working-class neighbourhood of Tallaght, Dublin.
Author of the book Paul Kavanagh, who is a local businessman based in Ratoath, Co. Meath, manages to write a book full of all the emotions that you would experience from growing up in Tallaght, Dublin in the 80’s and 90’s.
A personal mission of the author is to reach out to the young boys and men who are struggling with their mental health and in the early stages of the book, it describes what it was like living in Ireland in the 80s/90s and how men and boys in general had to maintain a façade and were not supposed to express how they were really feeling inside.
The book starts with a sense of loss and wonder, with the thoughts of what might have been due to the death of a family member of one of the lads.
The sense of comradery in this book is overwhelming with the four lads and it’s very much a case of "One for all and all for one".
A lot of first real life experiences are mentioned in the book such as secondary school, drink, drugs and sexual experiences and the author can dwell into what it was like growing up in those times with peer pressure being a main issue.
Irish humor and wit are found throughout the book and there is barrel full of laughs throughout the book, despite some very serious chapters. The secondary school experience had this reader laughing at certain incidents in the school term such as the “pitched tent” incident in the classroom and a certain science teacher!
As the book progresses, different relationships between them and the ladies come and go, with some dwelling on what could have been and throw in the odd one night stand for good measure.
The lads move on in life with them all going in different directions in terms of their careers and they realise what it is like to live in the big bad world.
It is well proclaimed in the book that drugs are frequently used and for some of the lads at an early age. It was an escaping mechanism to get them out of their heads and to escape from everyday life. However, on reading the book it shows how easy drink, drugs and women can take over your life with your regular hobbies and sports then go out the window.
The second half of the book does take a more serious turn and the realisation that how your life can change in a blink of an eye, by making the wrong decision or choosing the wrong action in certain situations.
With the drugs factor, the lads start off smoking hash and eventually do the full circle with drugs and they try to “chase the dragon” by moving onto the hardcore drug heroin. As mentioned before, the lads are unable to regulate and talk about their emotions and when a loss of someone close to them happens, some turn to drugs.
It’s so easy to go down the road of addiction to help ease the emotional and physical pain that life brings and book portrays what a life of hard drugs is like, ultimately leaving you with nothing. The lucky ones are those who come through addiction and out the other side, into recovery.
Unfortunately, there are those who don’t make it when it comes to addiction and they pay the ultimate price with their life.
On reflection of the book, it was a brilliant read throughout with a strong ending. It has everything from belly laughs to sadness and everything in between.
On many occasions it does pull on your heart strings, with the realisation that you can’t help everyone and that everyone has a road to walk.
An extremely powerful well written book, with a timeline of events that reflects what it was like growing up in working class community in Dublin during the 80s and 90s.
For Each A Road can be bought through Austin Macauley Publishers and Amazon.ie and we have attached the links below to purchase the book:
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