"The Coast Road" by Alan Murrin is the November 2024 selection for the IrishCentral Book Club.
Each month, we will pick a new Irish book or a great book by an Irish author and celebrate the amazing ability of the Irish to tell a good story for the IrishCentral Book Club.
"The Coast Road" is Co Donegal author Alan Murrin's debut novel and has been shortlisted for the An Post Irish Book Awards 2024 in the Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year category.
You can watch Murrin discuss his new novel with acclaimed Irish author Colm Tóibín here:
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Synopsis of "The Coast Road"
It's 1994 in County Donegal, Ireland, and everyone is talking about Colette Crowley – the writer, the bohemian, the woman who left her husband and sons to pursue a relationship with a married man in Dublin. But now Colette is back, and nobody knows why.
Returning to the community to try and reclaim her old life, Colette quickly learns that they are unwilling to give it back to her. The man to whom she is still married is denying her access to her children, and while the legalisation of divorce might be just around the corner, Colette finds herself caught between her old life and the freedom for which she risked everything.
Desperate to see her children, she enlists the help of Izzy, a housewife and mother of two, and the women forge a friendship that will send them on a spiralling journey – one toward a path of self-discovery, and the other toward tragedy.
Brilliantly observed from a sharp new literary talent, "The Coast Road" is a novel about a closed community and the consequences of daring to move against the tide.
Reviews for "The Coast Road"
"A perfect book club read ... Assured and powerful" - Sunday Times
"A compelling, compassionate page-turner" - Observer
"I loved this novel ... An addictive read" - Gillian Anderson
"Moves between rage, forgiveness and hope ... A stonkingly good novel" - Sarah Winman
"A beautiful, accomplished debut" - Louise Kennedy
"Impressive" - TLS
"An absolute triumph ... I loved everything about it" - Gill Hornby
About the author Alan Murrin
Alan Murrin is an Irish fiction writer. His debut novel "The Coast Road" was shortlisted for the An Post Irish Book Awards 2024 and the Peters Fraser Dunlop Queer Fiction Prize, and was long-listed for the Caledonia New Novel Award 2022.
In 2021 he was the winner of the Bournemouth Writing Prize for his short story “The Wake," which went on to be shortlisted for short story of the year at the Irish Book Awards and was published in the collection Waves of Change (Fresher Publishing, Bournemouth 2021).
In 2023, he was awarded an Irish Arts Council Next Generation Award. He is a graduate of the prose fiction masters at the University of East Anglia.
His work was featured as part of the New Irish Writing series in the Irish Independent. His fiction has appeared in The Cardiff Review, and has been anthologised in "Literally Speaking Berlin" (2019), "The Sacred Exists to be Found" (Aleph Press, London 2019), and the "UEA Prose Fiction Anthology" (2017).
His work has been short-listed for the Irish Arts and Writers Festival short story prize, the New Irish Writing in Germany Prize, and he was long-listed for the 2021 University of Essex International short story prize.
He writes for The Irish Times, The Times Literary Supplement and The Spectator. His writing on art and photography has appeared in Art Review and The White Review.
(Synopsis and reviews via Bloomsbury, biographical information via author's website.)
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