Louise Kennedy

Set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, a shattering novel about a young woman caught between allegiance to community and a dangerous passion. Amid daily reports of violence, Cushla lives a quiet life with her mother in a small town near Belfast. By day she teaches at a parochial school; at night she fills in at her family's pub. There she meets Michael Agnew, a barrister who's made a name for himself defending IRA members. Against her better judgment - Michael is not only Protestant but older, and married - Cushla lets herself get drawn in by him and his sophisticated world, and an affair ignites. Then the father of a student is savagely beaten, setting in motion a chain reaction that will threaten everything, and everyone, Cushla most wants to protect. As tender as it is unflinching, Trespasses is a heart-pounding, heart-rending drama of thwarted love and irreconcilable loyalties, in a place what you come from seems to count more than what you do, or whom you cherish.

In The End of the World is a Cul de Sac the political is intertwined with the personal, as Louise Kennedy reveals how ordinary lives can get caught up in a wider, national drama. Sarah, abandoned by her partner, sits alone in their brand new house. Orla, facing the strange revenge of her husband, is forced to judge a contest in the local fête. Peter raises his daughter in rural seclusion, at what might as well be the end of the world. Louise Kennedy started writing at the age of forty-seven, and her prose is instilled with a clarity and wisdom born of her own experience. This collection announces a major new voice in literary fiction for the twenty-first century.

No hubo nada que hiciera especial el día en que Cushla y Michael se conocieron. Pero en Belfast, el amor, como la vida, nunca se halla demasiado lejos de la violencia y la muerte. Y, sin embargo, el día en que ambos se conocieron estaba destinado a cambiarles la vida para siempre. Cada mañana la gente se levantaba para ir al trabajo, a la escuela, a la iglesia o al pub más cercano, y cada mañana el periódico traía noticias de otro coche bomba con víctimas, de otro hombre apaleado hasta la muerte o dado por muerto. Palabras como bomba trampa, artefacto incendiario, cóctel molotov, balas de goma, vehículo blindado y movimiento de vanguardia del Úlster se habían hecho de uso corriente en el patio de cualquier escuela. En una ciudad donde el miedo y la violencia se habían convertido en única moneda de cambio, la de Cushla y Michael será una historia forjada y condenada al amparo del secreto y el silencio.