A Beautiful Loan

This is Anna’s story.

In Dublin in 1985, nineteen-year-old Anna Hughes is in thrall to Peter Gallagher, an older, worldly man. Anna is introverted and naïve, and Peter’s experience, wide circle of friends and thirst for adventure captivate her. Her obsessive longing for him leads to marriage and, eventually, a crushing betrayal.

When Anna meets a kind-hearted Algerian man, she finds herself falling in love with him. Life with Karim offers stability and renewed hope and, slowly, Anna begins to uncover deeper layers of herself.

Unfolding over twenty-five years, this is a profound novel about the loss of innocence, the price of love, and the cost of seeking salvation in others. With her exquisite insight, Mary Costello tells a piercing story about longing, intimacy and the unpredictable road to discovery of the self.

Mary Costello’s short story collection, The China Factory, was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award and shortlisted for an Irish Book Award. Her first novel, Academy Street, won the Irish Novel of the Year Award and was named overall Irish Book of the Year in 2014. The River Capture, her second novel, was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards, the Kerry Group Awards and the Dalkey Book Awards. Mary Costello lives in Galway.

‘Costello is a writer of rare and exquisite sensitivity – intimate, piercing, death-haunted – with sentences that can turn on a pin into vastness.’ Paul Lynch

‘Brings to mind the elegance of Colm Tóibín and the insight of Alice Munro.’ Maggie O’Farrell

‘Mary Costello has a genius for taking ordinary, unheralded lives and discovering within them the disquiet, the disillusionment, concealed just below the surface.’ Australian