The Glorious Heresies
A Novel
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4.2 • 18 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the 2016 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and the Desmond Elliott Prize
Shortlisted for Best Newcomer at the Irish Book Awards
Longlisted for the 2016 International Dylan Thomas Prize
The Irish Times March Book of the Month
From Lisa McInerney, hailed by The Irish Times as “arguably the most talented writer at work in Ireland today,” comes The Glorious Heresies, a searing debut novel about life on the fringes of Ireland’s post-crash society.
When grandmother Maureen Phelan is surprised in her home by a stranger, she clubs the intruder with a Holy Stone. The consequences of this unplanned murder connect four misfits struggling against their meager circumstances. Ryan is a fifteen-year-old drug dealer desperate not to turn out like his alcoholic father, Tony, whose feud with his next-door neighbor threatens to ruin his family. Georgie is a sex worker who half-heartedly joins a born-again movement to escape her profession and drug habit. And Jimmy Phelan, the most fearsome gangster in the city and Maureen’s estranged son, finds that his mother’s bizarre attempts at redemption threaten his entire organization.
Biting and darkly funny, The Glorious Heresies presents an unforgettable vision of a city plagued by poverty and exploitation, where salvation still awaits in the most unexpected places.
— New York Time's Book Review's "10 Best Crime Novels" of the year
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Winner of the 2016 Baileys Prize, Irish author McInerney serves up an aptly titled debut novel that is biting, brash, and bleak. Set in Cork during the recent recession, the story revolves around the murder of a young sot named Robbie O'Donovan, who is accidentally done in by the religious relic wielding mother of notorious crime boss Jimmy Phelan. To cover his mother's mistake, Phelan hires a Tony, a "cleaner," to sort out the mess, but he is a widower and an abusive drunk with six kids. Soon Tara Duane, Tony's gossip-mongering ex-madam neighbor, gets involved, as does one of Tara's old employees, Georgie a coke snorting, on-again/off-again prostitute who half-heartedly searches for her disappeared ex-boyfriend, Robbie O'Donovan, while biding time with a religious cult to maybe get clean. Overly circuitous at times, the violence-riddled story flails under the weight of its complex setup in parts, but the sections involving Tony's teenage son, Ryan, pick up the slack. The scenes describing Ryan's earnest and sex-fueled relationship with his girlfriend are some of the most authentic and engaging in this gritty book, as is the boy's free fall into drug dealing and debauchery after shouldering one too many of his father's goofs. McInerney displays a clear knack for dramatic flourish and witty turns of phrase.
