2026 Reads

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.

Eimear McBride's debut tells, with astonishing insight and in brutal detail, the story of a young woman's relationship with her brother, and the long shadow cast by his childhood brain tumour. Not so much a stream of consciousness, as an unconscious railing against a life that makes little sense, and a shocking and intimate insight into the thoughts, feelings and chaotic sexuality of a vulnerable and isolated protagonist. To read A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing is to plunge inside its narrator's head, experiencing her world first-hand. This isn't always comfortable - but it is always a revelation. Touching on everything from family violence to sexuality and the personal struggle to remain intact in times of intense trauma, McBride writes with singular intensity, acute sensitivity and mordant wit. A Girl is a Half-formed Thing is moving, funny – and alarming. It is a book you will never forget.