not leaving Ireland

Alan Murrin: The Coast Road. 2024. 

I seem not to get out of Ireland… (just read John of John, I could read the Sky, Sally Rooney, The Soinning Heart, Mouthing, …). So, I ´m still in Ireland…(but I am not longing to move away from here, it is very nice in here :-)

This one, The Coast Road, this one is the Winner of the Irish Book Awards Newcomer of the Year 2024 and it also was Shortlisted for the John McGahern Annual Book Prize.

The story, very brutal, poignant.

Alan Murrin knows how to write a well told story. He has a storyline which flows. His story might not be a unique one, but once starting to read the book, it takes you, won ´t let go. His group of characters are (very Irish, very small town - minded) but well written, alive and colourful and flawed. Interesting.

From the plot:

So, there is an Irish woman. She has been a bit of a character, always a bit different from the everyday woman in the village. She is a poet, a woman with wealth. She betrays her husband, ends up leaving him, gos to Dublin to be with her lover but the betrayed husband won ´t let her see her three boys. So, when the affair ends, she comes back

to her home in County Donegal she comes the centre of the gossip.she is desperate to see her kids but her husband denies her rights. But, Collette find an ally, Izzy, also suffering in her marriage. (And because this is a n Irish novel, there is God, there is church and there is a pries who is a bit too familiar with one of the women in his parish).

Without money, means Collette, rents out a little cottage and for money she starts with writing courses. There are basically three women in the centre and all their marriages are horrid. Them in 1994 there is a national discussion of the divorce but it all will become true but unfortunately abortion not and this whole setting expodes with horrid tragedies and one has to say that freedom does not come cheap

"

The Coast Road is a story about the limits placed on women's lives in Ireland only a generation ago, and the consequences women have suffered trying to gain independence. Award-winning Irish author Alan Murrin reminds us of the price we are forced to pay to find freedom."

Very much liked this book!