** A Book of the Year in The Times - The New Statesman - Observer - Financial Times - Irish Times - Irish Independent - Times Literary Supplement **
WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE AND THE KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE AND THE IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR AT THE DALKEY LITERARY AWARDS
'Exquisite.' Damon Galgut
'Masterly.' The Times
'Miraculous.' Herald
'Astonishing.' Colm Tóibín
'Stunning.' Sunday Independent
'Absolutely beautiful.' Douglas Stuart
It is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces into his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him - and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church.
Review
A genuine one-in-a-generation writer. - The Times
[A] snowglobe of a story that fits a whole bustling, striving, yearning world into 114 finely wrought pages. - Sunday Times
Powerful and affecting and very timely . . . deeply moving. -- Hilary Mantel
Truly great . . . quietly radical -- Ali Smith - Guardian
Stunning . . . A haunting, hopeful masterpiece. -- Sinéad Gleeson
Remarkable . . . Truly exquisite. - Daily Telegraph
A restrained and intensely moral book, full of hope and love. - Observer
Marvellous - exact and icy and loving all at once. -- Sarah Moss
Book Description
An exquisite winter tale of courage - and its cost, set in Catholic Ireland.
About the Author
Claire Keegan was born in 1968 and grew up on a farm in Wicklow. Her first collection of short stories, Antarctica, was completed in 1998. It announced her as an exceptionally gifted and versatile writer of contemporary fiction and was awarded the Rooney Prize for Literature. Her second short story collection, Walk the Blue Fields, was published to enormous critical acclaim in 2007 and won her the 2008 Edge Hill Prize for Short Stories. Claire Keegan lives in County Wexford, Ireland.