'Edna O'Brien writes the most beautiful, aching stories of any writer, anywhere.' Alice Munro 'The taboo-breaking, the fabulous prose - there's no one like Edna.' Anne Enright 'Surprising and beautiful and courageous .. A beacon.' Megan Nolan 'Brilliant and brave.' Ann Patchett 'Glittering energy.' Colm Toibin
A woman walks the streets of Manhattan and contemplates with exquisite longing the precarious affair she has embarked on, amidst the grandeur and cacophony of the cityscape; a young Irish girl and her mother are thrilled to be invited to visit the glamorous Coughlan's but find - for all the promise of their green…
SET IN DUBLIN'S LIBERTIES, Estelle Birdy's explosively original debut Ravelling channels the energies and agonies of young men let loose in the city, their city, navigating the tumultuous trajectory of youth and young manhood, where they balance their hopes with the harsh realities of their present.
Hurtling between friendships, feuds, drug-deals, family and brushes with the law, this is modern Dublin as never before portrayed. Ravelling follows Deano, a weed-smoking hurling star, living with his aunt in an about-to-be-demolished flat; Hamza, a Pakistani Muslim atheist and precocious academic, who sells his ADHD drugs to the kids in a private school;…
When Christian Brother Paul Guilfoyle leaves his order after many years of celibacy, he moves to Spain to pursue his love of art and have a last fling at life. On witnessing the beautiful actress Viviana de Alonso swimming, he becomes obsessed with her beauty and the nature of desire. But when Viviana offers to pose for him in return for saving her daughter’s life in a forest fire, Paul begins to sense the actress may have an ulterior motive, and he fears he may have taken on more than he bargained for with the wily and unstable Viviana.
