'We know that civil wars are made up of thousands of small tragedies. Anne Enright, Irish Times, Books of the Year There has been praise for Kennedy's eye in recreating the Belfast of the mid-70s, but it is the precision of the emotional detail that holds the readers attention: after a while, you forget to exhale' 'Hands down the best book this year was Trespasses by Louise Kennedy. Every finely grooved detail here feels authentic' 'A first novel that reads nothing like one, this is a tender, fiercely beautiful story. War-induced longing is a common fictional occurrence - consider Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong, or, to a lesser degree, Ian McEwan's Atonement - but a vivid, sexy, not-doomed-feeling love story that also takes a war zone as a central subject rather than simply a setting is rarer'

'Not many novels mix juicy romance and wartime violence. Spellbindingly, heartbreakingly unforgettable' This is an unashamedly conventional realist novel, but such an exceptional one that it's bound to rekindle even the most cynical reader's appreciation of the form. 'Sometimes you don't need to reinvent the wheel. Tender and shocking, Trespasses is an unforgettable debut of people trying to live ordinary lives in extraordinary times.Ī 2022 BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR: THE TIMES * SUNDAY TIMES * GUARDIAN * TELEGRAPH * NEW STATESMAN * DAILY MAIL * IRISH TIMES * IRISH INDEPENDENT * BELFAST TELEGRAPH Delivery Info 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. In the class Cushla teaches, the vocabulary of seven-year-old children now includes phrases like 'petrol bomb' and 'rubber bullets'. But here, love is never far from violence, and this encounter will change both of their lives forever.Īs 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. There is nothing special about the day Cushla meets Michael, a married man from Belfast, in the pub owned by her family. If Michael Agnew had not walked through the door of the pub on a quiet night in February in his white shirt. If Seamie McGeown had not found himself alone on a dark street.

One by one, she undid each event, each decision, each choice. 'A beautiful, devastating novel' NICK HORNBY 'Intense, unflinchingly honest, it broke my heart a million times' MARIAN KEYES 'Like Sally Rooney mixed with a political thriller' RUSSELL KANE

* AN OBSERVER BEST DEBUT NOVELIST OF 2022 * * SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2022 * * WINNER OF THE AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARDS NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2022 * * LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2023 *

Trespasses louise kennedy review