Description

WINNER OF THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2014

She stood on the edge of the grass. She hovered between worlds, deciphering the ground, tracing in mid-air the hall, the dining-room, the stairs. She was despairingly close to home now, to the rooms and the voices that contained the first names for home. Memories abounded and her heart pounded and history broke in . . .

Growing up in the west of Ireland in the 1940s Tess is a shy introverted child. But beneath her quiet exterior lies a heart of fire. A fire that will later drive her to make her home among the hurly burly of 1960s New York.

Over four decades and a life lived with quiet intensity on Academy Street in upper Manhattan, Tess encounters ferocious love and calamitous loss. But what endures is her bravery and fortitude, and her striking insights even as she is ‘floating close to hazard.’

Joyous and heart-breaking, restrained but sweeping, this is a profoundly moving story that charts one woman’s quest for belonging amid the dazzle and tumult of America’s greatest city. Academy Street establishes Mary Costello as one of Ireland’s most exciting literary voices.

Publisher Review

Packed with emotional intensity * * Sunday Times * * A writer of huge ability . . . Brings to mind John Williams’s resurrected masterpiece, Stoner * * Guardian * * To recount a life story in a novel is a difficult task. To do so with brevity and unsentimental honesty takes greatness. Academy Street is a powerful and emotional novel from one of literature’s finest new voices — JOHN BOYNE An exceptional first novel * * The Times * * With extraordinary devotion, Mary Costello brings to life a woman who would otherwise have faded into oblivion — J.M. COETZEE Mary Costello’s writing has the kind of urgency that the great problems demand – call them themes; they are the kind of problems that make a writer — ANNE ENRIGHT * * Guardian * * Academy Street is understated, graceful and, ultimately, devastating. Even as my heart was breaking I couldn’t put the book down — DONAL RYAN, author of The Spinning Heart Intensely moving but never sentimental, Academy Street is a profound meditation on what Faulkner called ‘the human heart in conflict with itself’. In Tess Lohan, Mary Costello has created one of the most fully realised characters in contemporary fiction. What a marvel of a book — RON RASH Costello proves herself an absolute master in Academy Street * * Independent * * A novel where the interior life on an ordinary woman is delineated with artistry and grace * * Metro * *