The Glorious Heresies

From Lisa McInerney, hailed by The Irish Times as "arguably the most talented writer at work in Ireland today," comes The Glorious Heresies, a searing debut novel about life on the fringes of Ireland's post-crash society. 

When grandmother Maureen Phelan is surprised in her home by a stranger, she clubs the intruder with a Holy Stone. The consequences of this unplanned murder connect four misfits struggling against their meagre circumstances. 

"McInerney has talent to burn."  -  The Guardian (UK)

Ryan is a fifteen-year-old drug dealer desperate not to turn out like his alcoholic father, Tony, whose feud with his next-door neighbour threatens to ruin his family. Georgie is a sex worker who half-heartedly joins a born-again movement to escape her profession and drug habit. And Jimmy Phelan, the most fearsome gangster in the city and Maureen's estranged son, finds that his mother's bizarre attempts at redemption threaten his entire organization.

"This is a colourful, ambitious first outing that recalls Dylan Thomas' comment on Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds: 'Just the book to give your sister if she is a dirty, boozy girl.'"  -  Kirkus Reviews

Biting and darkly funny, The Glorious Heresies presents an unforgettable vision of a city plagued by poverty and exploitation, where salvation still awaits in the most unexpected places.

Winner of the 2016 Women's Prize For Fiction