Karl Geary

Juno loves Legs. She's loved him since their first encounter at school in Dublin, the time she fought the playground bullies for him. Her bright spirit makes his courage flare; his tenderness makes her safe. Together, they feel invincible, even if the world has other ideas. This is their story.

Montpelier Parade is just across town, but to Sonny it might as well be a different world. Working with his father in the garden of one of its handsome homes one Saturday, he sees a back door open and a beautiful woman come down the path toward him. This is Vera, the sort of person who seems destined to remain forever out of his reach. Hoping to cast off his loneliness and a restless sense of not belonging—at high school, in his part-time job at the butcher shop, and in the increasingly suffocating company of his own working-class family—Sonny drifts into dreams of a different kind of life. A series of intoxicating encounters with Vera lead him to feel he has fallen in love for the first time, but why does her past seem as unknowable as her future? Unfolding over a bright, rain-soaked Dublin spring, Montpelier Parade is a rich, devastating debut novel about desire, grief, ambition, art, and the choices we must make alone.