I enjoyed this book but I’m super surprised to find that it lists about ten different awards and shortlistings on its cover. I would have said it’s the sort of book that I like but I wouldn’t have been at all sure that everybody else would like it too. Obviously I’d have been way wrong.

A tale of two young Irish people and the intertwining of their lives from the end of their school years and through their college lives. It kept reminding me of Iris Murdoch in some kind of weird literary echo. This is a university tale featuring people two decades younger than me; Murdoch wrote about academia way before my time but I read her during my academic years (and have forgotten almost everything but the way the books made me feel, maybe I should read her works again now).

It wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but better.