Trespasses

Description

The breathtaking first novel from LOUISE KENNEDY An Observer Debut Novelist of 2022 A 2022 highlight for The Times and i paper 'A beautiful, devastating novel' NICK HORNBY 'Intense, unflinchingly honest, it broke my heart a million times' MARIAN KEYES 'Trespasses touches tenderly and hits hard . . . Every word rings true' EMMA DONOGHUE Cushla Lavery lives with her mother in a small town near Belfast. At twenty-four, she splits her time between her day job as a teacher to a class of seven-year-olds, and regular bartending shifts in the pub owned by her family. It's here, on a day like any other - as the daily news rolls in of another car bomb exploding, another man shot, killed, beaten or left for dead - that she meets Michael Agnew, an older (and married) barrister who draws her into his sophisticated group of friends. When the father of a young boy in her class, becomes the victim of a savage attack, Cushla is compelled to help his family. But as her affair with Michael intensifies, political tensions in the town escalate, threatening to destroy all she is working to hold together. As tender as it is unflinching, Trespasses is a masterfully executed and intimate portrait of those caught between the warring realms of the personal and political, rooted in a turbulent and brutally imagined moment of history - where it's not just what you do that matters, but what you are. -----------

Louise Kennedy grew up in Holywood, Co. Down. Her short stories have appeared in journals including The Stinging Fly, The Tangerine, Banshee, Wasifiri and Ambit and she has written for the Guardian, Irish Times, BBC Radio 4 and RTE Radio 1. Her work has won prizes and she was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award in both 2019 and 2020. Before starting her writing career, she spent nearly thirty years working as a chef. She lives in Sligo with her husband and two children.

Louise Kennedy's Trespasses touches tenderly and hits hard - a compulsively readable love story which is also a lament for a society agonizingly divided against itself. Every word rings true -- Emma Donoghue A layered, involving story, told with artfully quiet symbolism and remarkable narrative control * Observer * Trespasses is a beautiful, devastating novel. It feels real and true, and it loves its characters, utterly authentic people trying to live ordinary lives in desperate times. This book will last -- Nick Hornby [Louise Kennedy's] debut novel is incredible. Intense, unflinchingly honest, it broke my heart a million times, I was consumed by it -- Marian Keyes, Twitter The Northern Irish writer made quite an impact this year with her debut collection of stories, The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac. Her first novel tells the story of a young woman drawn into a relationship with an older married man * The Times * This writer does not stint * Anne Enright on The End of the World is a Cul de Sac * To carve such gilded stories as these would be an accomplishment for an old master, let alone for a relative newbie. Yet Kennedy's spritz of humous, as black as the holes these women are in, elevates her stories from downbeat to transcendent * Independent on The End of the World is a Cul de Sac *