Retreat

'Come Monday morning after breakfast, silence will commence . . . until the following Saturday morning. That gives you five full days of contemplation and prayer . . . As usual, leaving the Sister Chapel and its grounds is forbidden and, of course, Sutherland Square is expressly out of bounds.'

Retreat . . . (n.) a period of withdrawal from the ordinary activities of daily life in order to meditate on the central truths of faith, to seek a closer union with God . . .

. . . but for the teenage boarders at St Martin's school in Dublin some rules are made to be broken - as sixteen-year-old Mary Oliver discovers to her horror during a confessional. With the help and support of her best friends, Mary survives - but only just. Mary, Kitty, Bernadette, Bridie and Treasa are five girls from very different backgrounds, united by their need to break out from the often cruel constraints of convent life - and by an experience too awful to talk about until they are adults.

Written with passion, insight and humour, 'Retreat' is an unforgettable story about friendship and the loss of innocence, and is an exciting debut from a fresh new voice in Irish writing.