From the acclaimed writer of The End of the World is a Cul de Sac comes an astonishing debut novel about the lives ordinary people, where the political invades the personal and love is never far away from violence
The breathtaking first novel from LOUISE KENNEDY
An Observer Debut Novelist of 2022
A 2022 highlight for- The Times * i paper * New Statesman * New European * Irish Times * Irish Independent
'A beautiful, devastating novel' NICK HORNBY
'Intense, unflinchingly honest, it broke my heart a million times' MARIAN KEYES
'Trespasses touches tenderly and hits hard . . . Every word rings true' EMMA DONOGHUE
Cushla Lavery lives with her mother in a small town near Belfast. At twenty-four, she splits her time between her day job as a teacher to a class of seven-year-olds, and regular bartending shifts in the pub owned by her family. It's here, on a day like any other as the daily news rolls in of another car bomb exploding, another man shot, killed, beaten or left for dead that she meets Michael Agnew, an older (and married) barrister who draws her into his sophisticated group of friends.
When the father of a young boy in her class becomes the victim of a savage attack, Cushla is compelled to help his family. But as her affair with Michael intensifies, political tensions in the town escalate, threatening to destroy all she is working to hold together.
As tender as it is unflinching, Trespasses is a masterfully executed and intimate portrait of those caught between the warring realms of the personal and political, rooted in a turbulent and brutally imagined moment of history where it's not just what you do that matters, but what you are.
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