A Breath of Eire

The Angel of the Streetlamps by Sean Moncrieff

When Manda Ferguson falls out of an apartment window to her death, the story is on all the front pages. But then her death starts to have an effect on the living, particularly when claims are made that Manda’s ‘spirit’ is appearing beneath lampposts. Set in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 crash, in an economically devastated Ireland where people have lost faith in politics, business or religion, the novel strives to answer the question: when there’s nothing left to believe in, what can we believe?

“There is mystery, death and love in The Angel of the Streetlamps; there are wolves and there are sheep. Seán Moncrieff presents us with a cacophony of genuine voices strutting their views on politics, religion and class wars. Moncrieff is a master of the vicious aside, the canny comment and the funny twist, and he brings insight and intelligence to this novel of a damaged, confused and all too recognisable 21st century Ireland.” —Nuala Ní Chonchúir

Killarney Blues by Colin O’Sullivan

Picturesque Killarney might seem the perfect place to enjoy the rare gift of sunshine but the town has got the blues. Bernard Dunphy, eccentric jarvey and guitarist, is pining for his unrequited love and has to contend with an ailing mother and an ailing horse. His troubled friend Jack gets embroiled in a violent crime. A trio of girlfriends becomes entangled in the terrible webs of their own making. The novel fluctuates between darkness and light as the protagonists struggle with their inner demons. Can friendship, love and music save their sinking souls?

“Colin O’Sullivan writes with a style and a swagger all his own. His voice – unique, strong, startlingly expressive – both comes from and adds to Ireland’s long and lovely literary lineage. Like many of that island’s sons and daughters, O’Sullivan sends language out on a gleeful spree, exuberant, defiant, ever-ready for a party. Only a soul of stone could resist joining in.” —Niall Griffiths

My Perfect Cousin by Colin O’Sullivan

Rural Ireland in the late 1980s and stuck in a rut in a small unnamed village are fifteen-year-old cousins Laura and Kevin. The close cousins ache to abscond to somewhere bigger, better, where they are free to become who they really are. But things are holding them back. As well as having to cope with family tragedies, the troubled, music-obsessed teens must also negotiate the tricky terrain of burgeoning sexuality, the pitfalls of adolescence. The months and the spiraling family crises serve only to bring them closer together: but how close is too close?

Award-winning Irish writer Colin O’Sullivan returns to a familiar (and formative) Irish setting with My Perfect Cousin. Although rooted in the 1980s, this fraught and frantic work is startlingly relevant, with fractured families, illness and ill-will, teenage tantrums and taboos – all which will inevitably come to a head one chilling winter.