Awards
Winner of the 2016 Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction
Synopses & Reviews
From Lisa McInerney, hailed by The Irish Times as “arguably the most talented writer at work in Ireland today,” comes The Glorious Heresies, a searing debut novel about life on the fringes of Ireland’s post-crash society.
When grandmother Maureen Phelan is surprised in her home by a stranger, she clubs the intruder with a Holy Stone. The consequences of this unplanned murder connect four misfits struggling against their meager circumstances. Ryan is a fifteen-year-old drug dealer desperate not to turn out like his alcoholic father, Tony, whose feud with his next-door neighbor threatens to ruin his family. Georgie is a sex worker who half-heartedly joins a born-again movement to escape her profession and drug habit. And Jimmy Phelan, the most fearsome gangster in the city and Maureen’s estranged son, finds that his mother’s bizarre attempts at redemption threaten his entire organization.
Biting and darkly funny, The Glorious Heresies presents an unforgettable vision of a city plagued by poverty and exploitation, where salvation still awaits in the most unexpected places.
Review
"This book is a riot . . . McInerney’s sentences are like snowballs rolling down a hill, accumulating jokes and fecks and similes spun from pitch-black humor." BOMB
Review
"A spectacular debut . . . Tough and tender, gothic and lyrical, it is a head-spinning, stomach-churning state-of-the-nation novel about a nation falling apart.” The Telegraph
Review
"The Glorious Heresies heralds the arrival of a glorious, foul-mouthed, fizzing new talent.” The Sunday Times
Synopsis
Winner of the 2016 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and the Desmond Elliott Prize
Shortlisted for Best Newcomer at the Irish Book Awards
Longlisted for the 2016 International Dylan Thomas Prize
The Irish Times March Book of the Month
From Lisa McInerney, hailed by The Irish Times as "arguably the most talented writer at work in Ireland today," comes The Glorious Heresies, a searing debut novel about life on the fringes of Ireland's post-crash society.
When grandmother Maureen Phelan is surprised in her home by a stranger, she clubs the intruder with a Holy Stone. The consequences of this unplanned murder connect four misfits struggling against their meager circumstances. Ryan is a fifteen-year-old drug dealer desperate not to turn out like his alcoholic father, Tony, whose feud with his next-door neighbor threatens to ruin his family. Georgie is a sex worker who half-heartedly joins a born-again movement to escape her profession and drug habit. And Jimmy Phelan, the most fearsome gangster in the city and Maureen's estranged son, finds that his mother's bizarre attempts at redemption threaten his entire organization.
Biting and darkly funny, The Glorious Heresies presents an unforgettable vision of a city plagued by poverty and exploitation, where salvation still awaits in the most unexpected places.
-- New York Time's Book Review's "10 Best Crime Novels" of the year
About the Author
Lisa McInerney’s short stories have been featured on BBC Radio 4, Granta, in The Stinging Fly, and in the anthologies The Long Gaze Back and Faber’s Town and Country. The Glorious Heresies is her first novel, shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, Best Newcomer at the Irish Book Awards, and the Desmond Elliott Prize, as well as longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Lisa lives in Galway with a husband, a daughter, and a dog called Angua.