Trespasses
The most beautiful, devastating love story you'll read this year
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4.4 • 19 Ratings
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- €9.99
Publisher Description
**THE NO. 1 BESTSELLER (The Times), SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2023**
'Like Sally Rooney mixed with a political thriller' RUSSELL KANE
'Intense, unflinchingly honest, it broke my heart a million times' MARIAN KEYES
'Absolutely loved it' MAX PORTER
'A beautiful, devastating novel' NICK HORNBY
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One by one, she undid each event, each decision, each choice.
If Davy had remembered to put on a coat.
If Seamie McGeown had not found himself alone on a dark street.
If Michael Agnew had not walked through the door of the pub on a quiet night in February in his white shirt.
There is nothing special about the day Cushla meets Michael, a married man from Belfast, in the pub owned by her family. But here, love is never far from violence, and this encounter will change both of their lives forever.
As people get up each morning and go to work, school, church or the pub, the daily news rolls in of another car bomb exploded, another man beaten, killed or left for dead. In the class Cushla teaches, the vocabulary of seven-year-old children now includes phrases like 'petrol bomb' and 'rubber bullets'. And as she is forced to tread lines she never thought she would cross, tensions in the town are escalating, threatening to destroy all she is working to hold together.
Tender and shocking, Trespasses is an unforgettable debut of people trying to live ordinary lives in extraordinary times.
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* WINNER OF THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS BOOK OF THE YEAR: DEBUT FICTION *
* WINNER OF THE AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARDS NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2022 *
* WINNER OF THE MCKITTERICK PRIZE 2023 *
* SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2022 *
* AN OBSERVER BEST DEBUT NOVELIST OF 2022 *
* A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME *
* THE CRITICS' MOST-PICKED BOOK OF THE YEAR*
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kennedy (The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac) delivers an engaging if sometimes clunky story of a forbidden affair between a Catholic and a Protestant during the Troubles. In the mid-1970s, Cushla Lavery, a 24-year-old Catholic teacher, falls in love with Michael Agnew, an older married Protestant barrister who has a reputation for defending the rights of the Catholics. Their clandestine meetings start once Michael asks Cushla to give him and his friends Irish lessons, and soon they're spending nights together. Kennedy does a marvelous job at portraying Cushla's immense guilt and passion sparked by the affair, which offers a much-needed distraction for her from the bombings and murders claimed by the IRA and the UDA. While the romance is at the center of the story, Cushla's friendship with one of her primary school students whose father is almost killed during a sectarian attack and her troubled relationship with her alcoholic mother add substance. The straightforward prose style can be wearing in its endless accrual of detail, but Kennedy does a lovely job at capturing Cushla's mixed feelings and her determination to live her life during wartime. A solid character portrait emerges from the turbulent backdrop.
