Books

Julie McDermot has just been released from ‘The Mental’, the psychiatric institution where her husband committed her after the devastating loss of their two infant children. Returning to her narrow, lonely life along the canal, Julie is haunted by grief and the aching absence of what might have been. As she struggles to piece herself back together, an unexpected encounter with a stranger along the canal offers a glimmer of connection and the fragile possibility of hope.

Their encounter also brings long-submerged realities to the surface, to a place where they can no longer be ignored; exploring Ireland’s dark history of institutional incarceration and offering a profound glimpse of hopein a stunning portrait of a woman’s life. Moving and deeply evocative, this novel is a powerful meditation on sorrow, isolation, and the surprising ways joy can return to even the most broken heart.

In a series of unexpected moments when past loves and choices re-surface with startling clarity, the imperfect beings who populate these stories find themselves finally grasping the impact of crucial early relationships, as joy, loss and betrayal echo across decades. A man searches for a possible secret half-sister to understand his father. A woman is haunted by a boy’s death fifty years ago.

A lighthouse keeper recalls his first relationship. A public figure, slipping into dementia, relives a fateful night that haunts him. A man seeks insights into his mother’s past on a remote Portuguese island.

From childhood holidays shadowed by tragedy to chance reunions that rewrite old narratives, Bolger’s complex and deeply humane characters reveal the fragile beauty of human connection.