Search results for ""author louise kennedy""

'A dazzling, heartbreaking debut collection' Guardian 'Kennedy's voice, and her unforgiving gaze, are electric' Sunday Times 'These stories sing, haunt and inspire laughter ... One of the best collections I've read in years' Sinead Gleeson A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNER OF THE JOHN MCGAHERN PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE KATE O'BRIEN AWARD 2022 The secrets people kept, the lies they told. In these visceral, stunningly crafted stories, people are effortlessly cruel to one another, and the natural world is a primitive salve. Here, women are domestically trapped by predatorial men, Ireland’s folklore and politics loom large, and poverty – material, emotional, sexual – seeps through every crack. A wife is abandoned by her new husband in a ghost estate, with blood on her hands; a young woman is tormented by visions of the man murdered by her brother during the Troubles; a pregnant mother fears the worst as her husband grows illegal cannabis with the help of a vulnerable teenage girl; a woman struggles to forgive herself after an abortion threatens to destroy her marriage. Announcing a major new voice in literary fiction for the twenty-first century, these sharp shocks of stories offer flashes of beauty, and even humour, amidst the harshest of truths.

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**THE NO. 1 BESTSELLER (The Times), SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2023** 'Like Sally Rooney mixed with a political thriller’ RUSSELL KANE 'Intense, unflinchingly honest, it broke my heart a million times' MARIAN KEYES 'Absolutely loved it' MAX PORTER 'A beautiful, devastating novel' NICK HORNBY ------------------------- One by one, she undid each event, each decision, each choice. If Davy had remembered to put on a coat. If Seamie McGeown had not found himself alone on a dark street. If Michael Agnew had not walked through the door of the pub on a quiet night in February in his white shirt. There is nothing special about the day Cushla meets Michael, a married man from Belfast, in the pub owned by her family. But here, love is never far from violence, and this encounter will change both of their lives forever. As people get up each morning and go to work, school, church or the pub, the daily news rolls in of another car bomb exploded, another man beaten, killed or left for dead. In the class Cushla teaches, the vocabulary of seven-year-old children now includes phrases like ‘petrol bomb’ and ‘rubber bullets’. And as she is forced to tread lines she never thought she would cross, tensions in the town are escalating, threatening to destroy all she is working to hold together. Tender and shocking, Trespasses is an unforgettable debut of people trying to live ordinary lives in extraordinary times. ______________ * WINNER OF THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS BOOK OF THE YEAR: DEBUT FICTION * * WINNER OF THE AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARDS NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2022 * * WINNER OF THE MCKITTERICK PRIZE 2023 * * SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2022 * * AN OBSERVER BEST DEBUT NOVELIST OF 2022 * * A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME * * THE CRITICS' MOST-PICKED BOOK OF THE YEAR*

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