Ireland’s having an identity crisis, rent’s through the roof, and Cork is producing a profligate number of poets. A band called Lord Urchin bursts onto the scene with an insufferable mission statement, and four lives are turned inside-out.
Mel comes back to Cork from Brexit Britain, ill-equipped to deal with the resurgence of a family scandal. Eleventh-hour revolutionary Maureen won’t stop until she’s rewritten her city’s history. Former sex worker Georgie is encouraged to tell her story by a journalist with her own agenda. And Karine prepares for her ex-boyfriend’s return, knowing that he’s going to warp all around him . . . and that she’s going to help him do it.
This is a novel about art and its relationship to class and transgression, about trauma, gender, obsession and love. And about great nationalists, bad mothers, and a debut album that might drive the whole of Ireland mad.