'Like Sally Rooney mixed with a political thriller' RUSSELL KANE
'Intense, unflinchingly honest, it broke my heart a million times' MARIAN KEYES
'Absolutely loved it' MAX PORTER
'A beautiful, devastating novel' NICK HORNBY
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One by one, she undid each event, each decision, each choice.
If Davy had remembered to put on a coat.
If Seamie McGeown had not found himself alone on a dark street.
If Michael Agnew had not walked through the door of the pub on a quiet night in February in his white shirt.
There is nothing special about the day Cushla meets Michael, a married man from Belfast, in the pub owned by her family. But here, love is never far from violence, and this encounter will change both of their lives forever.
As people get up each morning and go to work, school, church or the pub, the daily news rolls in of another car bomb exploded, another man beaten, killed or left for dead. In the class Cushla teaches, the vocabulary of seven-year-old children now includes phrases like 'petrol bomb' and 'rubber bullets'. And as she is forced to tread lines she never thought she would cross, tensions in the town are escalating, threatening to destroy all she is working to hold together.
Tender and shocking, Trespasses is an unforgettable debut of people trying to live ordinary lives in extraordinary times.
"Brilliant, beautiful, heartbreaking. . . A rising sense of tension throughout comes to a shocking head. I am not a crier, but by the final pages of Trespasses, I was in tears. It's a testament to Kennedy's talents that we come to love and care so much about her characters. And that reading about a long and difficult period from the recent past feels not like history, but like a warning." --J.Courtney Sullivan, New York Times Book Review
"Brilliantly depicted. . . . Kennedy has written a captivating first novel which manages to be beautiful and devastating in equal measure." --The Washington Post
"Absorbing. . . . vivid, skillful. . . . wise far beyond its first book status, Trespasses vaults Kennedy into the ranks of such contemporary masters as McCann, Claire Keegan, . . . [and] Kevin Barry." --Oprah Daily
"Kennedy doesn't shy away from either fun or femininity. . . . By attending to romance and courtship, and by writing about beatings and bombings alongside gossip and domestic detail, Kennedy refuses to shrink or ignore any part of her characters' lives. . . . She demonstrates how artificial it is for fiction to divide love and war." --The Atlantic
"I absolutely loved Trespasses . . . .a rare book. Cushla's world is so acutely rendered, her inner life so vivid, that as she finds a new freedom with Michael you will genuinely worry for her. . . . It's impossible not to be gripped by her story." --Douglas Stewart, author of Shuggie Bain, on CNN
"A gorgeous, searingly intimate debut about the perils of following one's heart."--People Magazine
"Kennedy's powerful writing, tragic humor and vivid characters will move and haunt you."--San Francisco Chronicle
"[A] deeply evocative novel in the particularity of social description and ambience, in its atmosphere of menace, and in the urgency of the emotions portrayed -- sexual passion, guilt, shame, fear, hatred and compassion. Kennedy is masterly."--Star Tribune
"Louise Kennedy's debut has all the drama we need as our era of ironic devout Catholicism comes to a close. 1975! Belfast! A young Catholic woman has an affair with a married Protestant barrister! Drama! Intrigue! Incense! Sin!" --Nylon
"A devastating novel filled with love and passion amid a brutal and desperate time." --Chicago Review of Books
"Will fill every historical fiction fan with gratitude. . . . The novel's brilliance lies in Kennedy's commitment to nuance. . . . achiev[ing] the complexity of a multigenerational saga without sacrificing the striking intricacies of its central protagonist's story." --BookPage
"Kennedy's characters are born and live under dark stars; she illuminates the unescapable harms that occur in that darkness." --Kirkus Reviews
"Kennedy does a marvelous job at portraying Cushla's immense guilt and passion" --Publishers Weekly
"Thrilling, wise, and moving, Trespasses is a remarkable novel about the wages of love in a time marked by brutality, strife, and above all, a will to hope. A totally absorbing read." -Brandon Taylor
"A beautiful, devastating novel. It feels real and true, and it loves its characters, utterly authentic people trying to live ordinary lives in desperate times. This book will last." --Nick Hornby
"Trespasses touches tenderly and hits hard - a compulsively readable love story which is also a lament for a society agonizingly divided against itself. Every word rings true." --Emma Donoghue
"Distinguished by a quality rare in fiction at any time: a sense of utter conviction. It is a story told with such compulsive attention to the textures of its world that every page feels like a moral and intellectual event." --The Guardian
"A heartbreaking story of forbidden love."--Sunday Times (UK)
"Transcends time and place. . . Trespasses feels so authentic it's as if nobody wrote it at all; it always existed"--Irish Independent
"Kennedy writes with fierce power. . . . her tenderly sharpened prose open to feelings so presently intimate that her sentences take shape like a body beside you. . . . A writer of exceptional empathy, style, and skill."--Irish Times
"A master storyteller. . . . The novel was invented for writing like this." --Sunday Independent
