As You Were
I challenge you to not get emotionally invested in the rich, raw, and devastating lives of the characters in this debut novel. I will be thinking about the patients in this hospital ward for a long time to come.
Elaine Feeney’s As You Were is an absolute rollercoaster! Always funny, at times deeply emotional, this unconventional novel explores motherhood, illness, friendship, and marriage in a way that’s rarely so direct and relatable.
Description
Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize - Winner of the 2021 Kate O'Brien Award - Winner of the 2021 Dalkey Emerging Writer Award
Sin ad Hynes is a tough, driven, funny young property developer with a terrifying secret. No-one knows it: not her fellow patients in a failing hospital, and certainly not her family. She has confided only in Google and a shiny magpie. But she can't go on like this, tirelessly trying to outstrip her past and in mortal fear of her future. Across the ward, Margaret Rose is running her chaotic family from her rose-gold Nokia. In the neighbouring bed, Jane, rarely but piercingly lucid, is searching for a decent bra and for someone to listen. And Sin ad needs them both.
As You Were is about intimate histories, institutional failures, the kindness of strangers, and the darkly present past of modern Ireland; about women's stories and women's struggles; about seizing the moment to be free. Wildly funny, desperately tragic, inventive and irrepressible, As You Were introduces a brilliant voice in Irish fiction with a book that is absolutely of our times.