Hagstone
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- £8.99
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
‘Intelligent, probing’ MAGGIE O'FARRELL
‘Wild, singular… gripped me from the start’ DOUGLAS STUART
'Passionate, wild, hugely atmospheric' DAVID NICHOLLS
‘A gorgeous, mysterious read’ AISLING BEA
‘Wild, elemental… I adored it’ LOUISE KENNEDY
*A most anticipated 2024 debut in BBC, Daily Mail, Stylist, New Statesman, Sunday Independent, Irish Times, Irish Examiner, The Journal and The New European*
The haunting debut novel from beloved, Irish no. 1 bestselling author, Sinéad Gleeson.
The sea is steady for now. The land readies itself. What can be done with the woman on the cliff?
On a wild and rugged island cut off and isolated to some, artist Nell feels the island is her home. It is the source of inspiration for her art, rooted in landscape, folklore and the feminine. The mysterious Inions, a commune of women who have travelled there from all over the world, consider it a place of refuge and safety, of solace in nature.
All the islanders live alongside the strange murmurings that seem to emanate from within the depths of the island, a sound that is almost supernatural – a Summoning as the Inions call it. One day, a letter arrives at Nell’s door from the reclusive Inions who invite Nell into the commune for a commission to produce a magnificent art piece to celebrate their long history. In its creation, Nell will discover things about the community and about herself that will challenge everything she thought she knew.
Beautifully written, prescient and eerily haunting, Sinéad Gleeson’s debut novel takes in the darker side of human nature and the mysteries of faith and the natural world.
‘Original and captivating’ BBC
‘Startling, engrossing, darkly playful’ RODDY DOYLE
‘Wonderfully surprising and totally original’ ELAINE FEENEY
‘[This] magnificent debut novel is that rare thing: a literary page-turner’ JENNIFER HIGGIE
Sinéad Gleeson’s essay collection 'Constellations: Reflections from Life' won Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the 2019 Irish Book Awards, and the Emerging Writer award at the 2020 Dalkey Literary Awards.
About the author
Sinéad Gleeson’s essay collection Constellations: Reflections from Life was published by Picador in 2019 and won Non-Fiction Book of the Year at 2019 Irish Book Awards and the Dalkey Literary Award for Emerging Writer. It was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Michel Deon Prize. She is the editor of The Long Gaze Back: An Anthology of Irish Women Writers (named for a line from Maeve Brennan, which includes a story by Brennan), The Glass Shore: Short Stories by Women Writers from the North of Ireland and The Art of Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories. Sinéad also collaborates with artists and musicians, with commissions from The Wellcome Collection, BBC, Frieze and various galleries. In 2022, with Kim Gordon, she co-edited This Woman’s Work: Essays on Music, published by White Rabbit Books, and Hagstone is her first novel.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Sinéad Gleeson’s reputation as an essayist precedes her, so naturally the levels of anticipation for her debut novel were sky high. Happily, the weirdly wonderful Hagstone more than exceeds expectations, marrying the atmospheric suspense of the main plot with the lyrical precision of Gleeson’s writing. Hagstone follows Nell, an artist living on a remote island resplendent in its wildness, as she becomes entangled with the Inions, a mysterious commune of women drawn to the island by a sound they call the Summoning. As the story unfolds, Gleeson weaves Nell’s steady awakening to the Inions and their obscure motives through evocative descriptions of the island as a living, breathing force of its own, building to a macabre crescendo in the final chapters. Strange, witchy and compelling, Hagstone’s perfectly paced refusal to relinquish its secrets until the opportune moment will keep you turning pages through to the very end.
