'Vivid, memorable and beautifully crafted' - Sarah Moss, author of
Summerwater
'A brilliant collection, from a remarkable talent' - Joseph O'Connor,
author of Shadowplay
Hearts and Bones is a book about relationships. It explores what love
does to us, and how we survive it.
A young woman learns to wield her power, leaving casualties in her wake,
while a man from a small town finds solace in a strange new hobby. A
watchful child feels a breaking point approach as her mother struggles
to keep her life on track, and another daughter steps onto a stage while
her family in the audience hope that she is strong enough now to take on
the world.
First-time lovers make mistakes, brothers and sisters try to forgive one
another, and parents struggle and fail and struggle again. Teenage souls
are swayed by euphoric faith in a higher power and then by devotion to
desire, trapped between different notions of what might be true. Quiet
revolutions happen in living rooms, on river banks, in packed pubs and
empty churches, and years later we wonder why we ever did the things we
did.
Set between Ireland and London in the first two decades of this
millennium, the stories in Hearts and Bones, Niamh Mulvey's debut
collection, look at the changes that have torn through these times and
ask who we are now that we've brought the old gods down. Witty, sharply
observed and deeply moving, these ten stories announce an extraordinary
new Irish literary talent.
'Highly accomplished, inventive . . . what stands out is Mulvey's
command of her own originality' - Irish Times
'Honest, daringly fresh and stunningly written, these stories cut
right to the very essence of what it means to be young' - Jan Carson,
author of The Raptures
