The Coast Road
'A perfect book club read' Sunday Times
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
'A perfect book club read ... Assured and powerful' SUNDAY TIMES
'A compelling, compassionate page-turner' OBSERVER
'I loved this novel ... An addictive read' GILLIAN ANDERSON
'Moves between rage, forgiveness and hope ... A stonkingly good novel' SARAH WINMAN
'A beautiful, accomplished debut' LOUISE KENNEDY
'Impressive' TLS
It's 1994 in County Donegal, Ireland, and everyone is talking about Colette Crowley – the writer, the bohemian, the woman who left her husband and sons to pursue a relationship with a married man in Dublin. But now Colette is back, and nobody knows why.
Returning to the community to try and reclaim her old life, Colette quickly learns that they are unwilling to give it back to her. The man to whom she is still married is denying her access to her children, and while the legalisation of divorce might be just around the corner, Colette finds herself caught between her old life and the freedom for which she risked everything. Desperate to see her children, she enlists the help of Izzy, a housewife and mother of two, and the women forge a friendship that will send them on a spiralling journey – one toward a path of self-discovery, and the other toward tragedy.
Brilliantly observed from a sharp new literary talent, The Coast Road is a novel about a closed community and the consequences of daring to move against the tide.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Murrin's smashing debut follows two unhappily married women in a small town in Ireland as they test the bounds of independence. In 1994, Izzy Keaveney heads to mass after a night spent fighting with her husband, James, over his refusal to support her wish to reopen her flower shop, which she ran until the birth of their first child, who's now a teen. At church, she encounters poet Colette Crowley, who has recently returned from Dublin and whose husband, Shaun, has banned her from seeing their three sons ever since she had an affair and announced she was leaving him some months earlier. When Colette starts a writing workshop in town, Izzy enrolls, and after class one evening, she agrees to help Colette secretly meet with one of her sons. After Shaun learns what Colette's up to, he forbids her from making a promised Christmas visit, pleads with James to put a stop to Izzy's meddling, and intimates to him that Izzy is having an affair with the new parish priest. Heartbroken, Colette drinks heavily and stumbles into an affair with her married landlord, whose wife is pregnant; meanwhile, Izzy considers separating from James. Each of the characters is vividly rendered, and Murrin excels at portraying the rippling consequences of small-town gossip and intolerance. This is a marvel.
