’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.

LOUISE KENNEDY

LOUISE KENNEDY grew up a few miles from Belfast. She is the author of the Women’s Prize Longlisted novel, Trespasses, and the acclaimed short story collection, The End of the World is a Cul de Sac, and is the only woman to have been shortlisted twice for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award (2019 and 2020). Before starting her writing career, she spent nearly thirty years working as a chef. She lives in Sligo.