Hearts and Bones
Love Songs for Late Youth
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Pan Macmillan
Published:23rd Jun '22
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The debut of an exciting new voice in Irish fiction, Hearts and Bones: Love Songs for Late Youth is a collection of songlike stories about love in all its forms, and about what it is to look back on the lost loves of our past.
'Vivid, memorable and beautifully crafted’ - Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater
'A brilliant collection, from a remarkable talent' - Joseph O'Connor, author of Shadowplay
Hearts and Bones is a book about relationships. It explores what love does to us, and how we survive it.
A young woman learns to wield her power, leaving casualties in her wake, while a man from a small town finds solace in a strange new hobby. A watchful child feels a breaking point approach as her mother struggles to keep her life on track, and another daughter steps onto a stage while her family in the audience hope that she is strong enough now to take on the world.
First-time lovers make mistakes, brothers and sisters try to forgive one another, and parents struggle and fail and struggle again. Teenage souls are swayed by euphoric faith in a higher power and then by devotion to desire, trapped between different notions of what might be true. Quiet revolutions happen in living rooms, on river banks, in packed pubs and empty churches, and years later we wonder why we ever did the things we did.
Set between Ireland and London in the first two decades of this millennium, the stories in Hearts and Bones, Niamh Mulvey's debut collection, look at the changes that have torn through these times and ask who we are now that we’ve brought the old gods down. Witty, sharply observed and deeply moving, these ten stories announce an extraordinary new Irish literary talent.
'Highly accomplished, inventive . . . what stands out is Mulvey's command of her own originality' - Irish Times
'Honest, daringly fresh and stunningly written, these stories cut right to the very essence of what it means to be young’ - Jan Carson, author of The Raptures
These stories are vivid, memorable and beautifully crafted. I was delighted to discover Niamh Mulvey’s work. -- Sarah Moss, Sunday Times bestselling author of Summerwater
Astute, surprising and wholly entertaining . . . There is a rich wit at play, Mulvey is an adept practitioner * Irish Independent *
A brilliant collection, from a remarkable talent. These powerful stories come to us zinging with truth and wit, with pain and insight and joy -- Joseph O'Connor
Highly accomplished, inventive . . . What stands out is Mulvey's command of her own originality . . . Though a debut writer, Mulvey is coming in at a high level with a book that delivers much and promises more -- Rónán Hession * Irish Times *
Beautifully written . . . a striking, page-turning debut * Image *
Marvellous . . . A short and sweet debut collection brimming with poised assurance . . . Mulvey is an extremely talented writer * Business Post *
A hugely impressive debut that pivots on tiny moments rendered large, with such skill. Panoramic, precise, in controlled, stunning prose. -- Sinéad Gleeson, author of Constellations
Gorgeous stories full of humour, insight and readability * Irish Examiner *
Poignant and lyrical . . . Unsparingly honest in their perspective, these stories invite us to observe the fragility of truth and life. * Sunday Independent *
Honest, daringly fresh and stunningly written, these stories cut right to the very essence of what it means to be young -- Jan Carson, author of The Raptures
Niamh Mulvey's stories are compassionate yet unflinchingly honest. She is a remarkable new talent with a distinctive voice and viewpoint. I can't wait to read more of her work -- Jane Casey
Using crisp prose and, it seems, almost total recall, Niamh Mulvey's stories chronicle a changing Ireland. Hearts and Bones is a terrific debut collection from a writer full of promise -- Sinéad Crowley, author of The Belladonna Maze
Mulvey's precision, humour and economy are a kind of close up magic, albeit one that kicks you in the heart. Monolithic themes brought to a shimmering, livid clarity. Exceptional -- Rhik Samadder
Closely observed, sparely told and deeply felt, the ten stories of Hearts and Bones will stay with you after you finish the book -- Ed O'Loughlin
In Hearts and Bones, Niamh Mulvey demonstrates that she is a brilliant anatomist of shame and longing. This is a book to relish -- Tomiwa Owolade
Mulvey is a stylish and inventive, yet precise, writer who captures a contemporary sensibility in her stories of love and disillusion -- Niamh Donnelly, Irish Times
Mulvey is masterful in her brevity, conjuring the light and dark from seemingly ordinary situations with the penning of a single, pointed detail. Rich but simple language creates a tug of war between spiky, sharp observations and moments of clarity and softness for the shared human experience * RTÉ Culture *
ISBN: 9781529079913
Dimensions: 223mm x 143mm x 24mm
Weight: 288g
176 pages