As You Were
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize • Winner of the 2021 Kate O'Brien Award • Winner of the 2021 Dalkey Emerging Writer Award
Sinéad Hynes is a tough, driven, funny young property developer with a terrifying secret. No-one knows it: not her fellow patients in a failing hospital, and certainly not her family. She has confided only in Google and a shiny magpie. But she can't go on like this, tirelessly trying to outstrip her past and in mortal fear of her future. Across the ward, Margaret Rose is running her chaotic family from her rose-gold Nokia. In the neighbouring bed, Jane, rarely but piercingly lucid, is searching for a decent bra and for someone to listen. And Sinéad needs them both.
As You Were is about intimate histories, institutional failures, the kindness of strangers, and the darkly present past of modern Ireland; about women's stories and women's struggles; about seizing the moment to be free. Wildly funny, desperately tragic, inventive and irrepressible, As You Were introduces a brilliant voice in Irish fiction with a book that is absolutely of our times.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Feeney's brilliant debut follows an Irish woman's struggle to accept a terminal cancer diagnosis. Sinéad Hynes, 39, a successful property developer, is married with two young boys. When first diagnosed with cancer, she refuses to tell anyone, including her husband, Alex. But when she lands in a poorly funded hospital, she is forced to contend with her new reality. Feeney skillfully tells the stories of other patients, including Margaret Rose, recovering from a stroke, and Jane, suffering from dementia. In the closed space of the ward, these three women share their secrets. Margaret Rose has a philandering husband and pregnant teenage daughter. Jane, a retired teacher, has a husband and nine children but no visitors. She tells Margaret Rose and Sinéad about her long-ago love for another woman, Ann, and about her and Ann's tragic place in Ireland's history of abuse of women. As Sinéad's illness progresses, she comes to terms with her past, her illness, and her deep love for her family, which swells in poignant moments such as when Alex helps to "smuggle" her out of the hospital. Never sentimental, and full of well-crafted dialogue and rich descriptions, the story is driven forward by Sinéad's strong narration. This powerful work perfectly balances tragedy and hope.
