Evenings and Weekends
-
-
4.0 • 5 Ratings
-
-
- £8.99
-
- £8.99
Publisher Description
'I COULDN'T PUT IT DOWN' SHON FAYE
'A MASTERPIECE. THIS SEARING TALE OF LOVE, SEX AND CLASS WILL RESONATE FOR GENERATIONS TO COME' OWEN JONES
'Intoxicating.' Irish Times
'Electric and intimate' Guardian
'The ultimate summer read’ Stylist
Summer in London stops for no-one. Not the half-naked boozers, stoners, and cruisers, the hen parties glugging from bejewelled bottles, the drag queens puffing on hurried fags. It’s June 2019, and everyone has converged on the city’s parks, beer gardens and street corners to revel in the collective joys of being alive.
Everyone but Maggie. She’s 30, pregnant and broke. Faced with moving back to the town she fought to escape, she’s wondering if having a baby with boyfriend Ed will be the last spontaneous act of her life. Ed, meanwhile, is trying to run from his past with Maggie’s best friend Phil and harbouring secret dreams of his own.
Phil hates his office job and is living for the weekend, while falling for his housemate, Keith. But there’s a problem: Keith has a boyfriend and there might not be room for three people in the relationship. Then there’s Rosaleen, Phil’s mother, who’s tired of feeling like a side character in her own life. She’s just been diagnosed with cancer and is travelling to London to tell Phil, if she can ever get hold of him.
As Saturday night approaches, all their lives are set to change forever. It’s the hottest summer on record and the weekend is about to begin…
One of the hottest debuts of 2024, as featured in GUARDIAN, GQ, ESQUIRE, THE BOOKSELLER, IRISH TIMES, INDEPENDENT, THE SKINNY, HERO MAGAZINE, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
About the author
Oisín McKenna grew up in Drogheda, Ireland, and lives in London. He was awarded the Next Generation Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland to write Evenings and Weekends – the highest award for an emerging artist in Ireland – and it was developed with further funding from Arts Council England. Evenings and Weekends has been awarded a 2022 London Writers Award, which supports London’s most promising underrepresented writers. In 2017, Oisín was named in the Irish Times one of the best-spoken word artists in the country. He has written and performed four theatre shows, including ADMIN, an award-winning production at Dublin Fringe 2019, and has written for outlets including the Irish Times on issues such as gentrification and the alienation of Dublin’s youth.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Oisín McKenna weaves an instantly recognisable tapestry of millennial malaise in this tightly knit debut, centred on a group of friends during a blazing hot London summer. The plot takes a backseat to the introduction and unfurling of the core cast of characters—realistically rendered in three full-colour dimensions on the page—and how the weekend that contains this particular story shapes and remoulds them around their nebulous futures. McKenna doesn’t shy away from voicing some of the self-evident truths that nonetheless go unspoken in daily lives, addressing everything from politics to sexuality through the frank conversations that spill out across the course of the narrative. Touted as the novel every Sally Rooney fan should have on their reading list, Evenings and Weekends more than lives up to the hype.
