Description
Trespasses
13 Apr 2023
by Louise Kennedy
- Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
- Language : English
- Pages : 321
- ISBN-10 : ?1526623366
- ISBN-13 : 9781526623362
* SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2022 ** AN OBSERVER DEBUT NOVELIST FOR 2022 ** A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME *’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 HORNBYOne 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.———–Picked as a highlight for 2022 by:The Times * i paper * New Statesman * New European * Irish Times * Irish Independent
Reviews
4.0 rating based on 47,681 ratings (all editions)
ISBN-10: 1526623366
ISBN-13: 9781526623362
Goodreads: 123167259
Author(s):
Published: //
Set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, a shattering novel about a young woman caught between allegiance to community and a dangerous passion.
Amid daily reports of violence, Cushla lives a quiet life with her mother in a small town near Belfast. By day she teaches at a parochial school; at night she fills in at her family's pub. There she meets Michael Agnew, a barrister who's made a name for himself defending IRA members. Against her better judgment - Michael is not only Protestant but older, and married - Cushla lets herself get drawn in by him and his sophisticated world, and an affair ignites. Then the father of a student is savagely beaten, setting in motion a chain reaction that will threaten everything, and everyone, Cushla most wants to protect.
As tender as it is unflinching, Trespasses is a heart-pounding, heart-rending drama of thwarted love and irreconcilable loyalties, in a place what you come from seems to count more than what you do, or whom you cherish.
