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Louise Kennedy

Biography

Louise Kennedy

Louise Kennedy grew up near Belfast. TRESPASSES is her first novel. She is also the author of a collection of short stories, THE END OF THE WORLD IS A CUL DE SAC. She has written for the Guardian, the Irish Times and BBC Radio 4. Before becoming a writer, she worked as a chef for almost 30 years. She lives in Sligo, Ireland.

Louise Kennedy

Books by Louise Kennedy

by Louise Kennedy - Fiction, Short Stories

In THE END OF THE WORLD IS A CUL DE SAC, women’s lives are etched by poverty --- material, emotional, sexual --- but also splashed by beauty, sometimes even joy, as they search for the good in the cards they’ve been dealt. A wife is abandoned by her new husband in a derelict housing estate, with blood on her hands. An expectant mother’s worst fears about her husband’s entanglement with a teenage girl are confirmed. A sister is tormented by visions of the man her brother murdered during the Troubles. A woman struggles to forgive herself after an abortion threatens to destroy her marriage.

by Louise Kennedy - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Amid daily reports of violence, Cushla lives a quiet life with her mother in a small town near Belfast, teaching at a parochial school and moonlighting at her family’s pub. There she meets Michael Agnew, a Protestant barrister who has made a name for himself defending IRA members. Against her better judgment, Cushla lets herself get drawn in by him and his sophisticated world, and an affair ignites. Then the father of a student is savagely beaten, setting in motion a chain reaction that will threaten everything, and everyone, Cushla most wants to protect.