The Amendments

Tender and profoundly moving, The Amendments is the story of three Irish women over four decades, a love story, and a family drama that will break your heart.<BR><BR>'An extraordinary achievement. The Amendments is about a lot of things - love, family, girlhood, growing up, sex, legacy, compassion - all blended into a moving plot' - Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist<BR><BR>Nell and her partner Adrienne are about to have a baby. For Adrienne, parenthood is the start of a new life. For Nell, it's the reason the two of them are sitting in a therapist's office. Because she can't go into this without facing the painful truth: that she has been a mother before.<BR><BR>For Dolores, Nell's mother, the news also brings a reckoning: with the way her daughter's life unfolded fifteen years ago, with its inextricable ties to her own past, and with the tragedy that neither of them have spoken about since . . .<BR><BR>'Engrossing and moving' - Emma Donoghue, author of Room<BR>'It cuts to the heart of what it means to be human' - Elizabeth Macneal, author of The Doll Factory<BR>'As significant as it is enjoyable' - Emma Stonex, author of The Lamplighters<BR>'Wonderfully compelling' - Joseph O'Connor, author of Star of the Sea<BR><BR>Set in Ireland against the backdrop of a series of abortion referendums, The Amendments is the debut novel from Niamh Mulvey, author of Hearts and Bones, and was selected by the Irish Independent, the Irish Times, the Irish Journal and VIP as one of the most anticipated novels of the year.

'Vivid, memorable and beautifully crafted' - Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater<BR>'A brilliant collection, from a remarkable talent' - Joseph O'Connor, author of Shadowplay<BR><BR>Hearts and Bones is a book about relationships. It explores what love does to us, and how we survive it.<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>'Highly accomplished, inventive . . . what stands out is Mulvey's command of her own originality' - Irish Times<BR><BR>'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