Lovely characters and an engaging plot. I loved this book and cannot wait to read more from this author. Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I am obsessed with this!!!! Louise Kennedy is a brilliant writer, I can't believe this is her debut!! I won't be doing a full review as I work for Bloomsbury.

Do you ever sit down to write your thoughts about a book and just don’t know where to begin? Well, here I am, having finished Louise Kennedy’s debut novel. Should I start with the writing, which is excellent? What about the characters? Cushla Lavery, who stole my heart. Michael, who stole hers. Davy, her young pupil who she looks out for. Gerry, the friend we would all be a better person for having. Even Gina, Cushla’s alcoholic mother, who I spent the whole novel wanting to shake, but who had me wanting to shake her hand by the end. And not to forget Bradley and Father Slattery, who I both wanted to kick in the bollocks.

Sometimes you read reviews of books and you wonder if there’s some exaggeration involved. Is it really possible for an author to achieve *that* much in a book, in a mere few hundred pages? How can they capture the nuances of an affair, and introduce fleshed-out characters and describe a setting - 1970s Belfast - and place us in it so expertly that we can feel the oppression, the tightness, the simmering tension and violence that is a constant backdrop for the characters who live there.

And how do you wrap up a story like that? A story that is essentially tragic, about an affair between a young Catholic woman and an older married Protestant man that is destined to go wrong for Cushla from the very beginning.

Well, all I can say is that Louise Kennedy has done it. She has achieved all these things and more in a novel that I will be pressing into the hands of anyone and everyone who asks me for a recommendation from now on. This is the very, very best of Irish writing, and is without doubt one of my top reads of 2022. All the stars.

Trespasses is a moving and heartbreaking love story set in the 1970s Troubles in Northern Ireland.
Cushla is a teacher in a Catholic primary school. . She lives with her alcoholic mother and helps out at the family pub in the evenings. He life is controlled and quiet in the midst of a highly volatile and frightening small town near Belfast.
One night Michael Agnew, a married Protestant barrister walks into the bar. The attraction is instant and Cushla is drawn into a passionate affair. As her life becomes more open she begins to help the family of one of her pupils after his father is seriously injured in a vicious sectarian attack. Soon she is taking risks that could lose her her job if not her freedom.
This is such a powerful novel, the extreme violence a terror that Northern Ireland’s citizens were subjected to on a day to day basis are vivid and shockingly described . The love story at the heart of the book is so beautiful and heartbreaking that it moved me to tears. It’s hard to believe that is is a debut novel, Louise Kennedy is an astonishing writer.
Thank you to #netgalley and #bloomsburybooks for allowing me to review this ARC

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy.
Cushla Lavery lives with her mother in a small town near Belfast. At twenty-four, she splits her time between her day job as a teacher to a class of seven-year-olds, and regular bartending shifts in the pub owned by her family. It’s here, on a day like any other – as the daily news rolls in of another car bomb exploding, another man shot, killed, beaten or left for dead – that she meets Michael Agnew, an older (and married) barrister who draws her into his sophisticated group of friends.
A good read with good characters. I did find this a little slow in places. 3*.

Trespasses by June Caldwell is a powerful, moving story set against the backdrop of political tension in 1970s Northern Ireland.

Cushla is a teacher by day but also works in the family bar outside the sectarian confines of the city where she meets a kind gentleman, Michael Agnew. They become friends although Cushla doesn't know much of what Michael does for a living. At school, Cushla takes a young student Davy McGeown under her wing realising that the family is going through a difficult time.

Inevitably, social and sectarian tension makes life difficult for Cushla before things spiral out of control.

This superbly written story is so vividly realistic that it brought me right back to the dark days of my teenage years growing up in North Belfast.

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy.

Happy Publication Day to this beautiful novel. I think Trespasses is my favourite book of the year to date. I read Louise Kennedys short story collection, The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac, last year and loved it and so was really looking forward to Trespasses, her debut novel. I knew little about its premise and was immediately and wholly swept away into this story upon starting to read.

Set in a small town near Belfast in the 1970's, Cushla is a twenty four year old woman who teaches during the day and helps out in her family bar in the evenings. Kennedy creates such a strong sense of space and time right from the opening chapters. Car bombs, shootings, beatings are all part of the fabric of this town during the Troubles and Kennedy weaves their presence throughout the story as political tensions build. One evening in the bar , Cushla meets Michael, a barrister, older and married. Cushla is drawn into the parts of the world Michael inhabits, his circle of friends and  some elements of his life that he can share with her as the turbulent tensions of the time swirl around them.

This book is exquisitely written. Short , sharp sentences. Pared back , beautiful prose. The setting and point in time is so dark yet Kennedy evokes such emotion and vibrancy with her words. This book's quiet beauty is so overwhelmingly powerful. Wonderful characters, incredible writing so brutal and so tender with a deeply satisfying conclusion. An emotional, thought provoking read. I read this book weeks ago and have thought about it every day since.

I would like to thank the author for her words and wish her every success with this book. It deserves to be read widely. 
5 star.

Teacher and bar worker Cushla is a Catholic living near Belfast during the troubles.
She starts an affair with Michael a prominent Protestant Barrister.
Trying to keep the affair secret from her alcoholic mother and friends becomes a problem.
With tensions on both sides of the divide Cushla also becomes involved with a family of a pupil at her school.
The story was not as gripping as it could have been and I felt it plodded along with something missing.

I

Set in 1970s Northern Ireland during the Troubles, Cushla, a teacher, is caught between her community and an illicit passion.
This is a love story set against the backdrop of sectarian violence. In fact there are 2 love stories: Cushla and Michael but also Cushla and her young pupil, Davey. It’s a shattering novel depicting ordinary people trying to live their ordinary lives in a time of bigotry and brutality.
The terror is shocking, raw and visceral but there is so much humanity, tough humour and love. It feels honest, tender and heartbreaking.
It’s beautiful, intimate writing - angry, vulnerable and sad with flawed, vivid characters.
It made my heart ache with its gritty tenderness and longing. An extraordinary, devastatingly beautiful work. So powerful. I loved it! You should all read this!
Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC. All views are my own.

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy

Cushla Lavery is a 24 year old Catholic primary school teacher in 1970s Northern Ireland. Whilst helping out in her family's bar she meets Michael Agnew, a Protestant barrister and they begin an affair with devastating consequences.

What a powerful novel! In tight unflinching prose this story really packs a lot in - grief, alcoholism, sectarianism, violence, poverty, religion. politics.... yet love, tenderness and friendship too. Very highly recommended - I can't wait to see what Louise Kennedy does next!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this novel.

Cushla is a catholic school teacher in Northern Ireland in one of the most dangerous, divided times in its history. Michael is a well to do Protestant twice her age, and so the stage is set for a difficult, moving and enthralling romance set against a backdrop of horrors. I read a lot of fiction set in NI and this is some of the best of it - compelling characters, intriguing plots and a love story mired in excitement and tinged with pain as all the best ones are. Kennedy writes in a relaxed, almost laconic way, in no rush to tell Cushla's story, which underscores the horrors she is surrounded by - men are beaten and left for dead, buildings are bombed. For fans of Tish Delaney, Anna Burns or Lucy Caldwell, this is a lovely book that will stay with me for a while.

Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. I absolutely loved it and read it in a day! It has a great writing style and well developed characters, especially Cushla and little Davy. It’s a great story set against the backdrop of Northern Ireland and all its complexities. A warm and compelling read I couldn’t put it down. Highly recommended!

This book must be one of the best I have read in the last year – nothing before has brought home to me the stark realities people in Northern Ireland lived through during the times of The Troubles.

The main story is set in Northern Ireland in the 70s. It is framed by an incident set in an art gallery more than 35 years later, where the main character – Cushla – encounters a sculpture that brings back the memories of what happened all those years ago.

Cushla’s family is catholic, they own a pub and given this very public service, they need to tread carefully when it comes to balancing the interests of their clientele of Loyalists, Republicans, the army and local police. When Cushla falls in love with a protestant barrister who has made a name for himself by confronting the bias of the judicial system, events start to unfold that very quickly spiral out of control. She is a very likeable character, a teacher who really cares about her children, who she tries to protect from the menaces of the over-zealous catholic priest; she is fair-minded and hard working and through no real fault of her own gets entangled in what can only be described a heart-wrenching story. The consequences of her actions are devastating not only for her, but – like the ripple effect of a stone being thrown into a pond - for many others too.

The style of the narration can be described as staccato, the tone laconic, understated and matter-of-fact with many jumps in the narrative – all this helps to drive home a chilling and grim reality: daily killings, harassment suffered at the hands of police and army, the sectarian bigotry of the job market, and the everyday fear of being seen talking to the wrong person or even wearing the wrong school uniform.

This book, centred around a sensual and deep-felt love story, which for many reasons was doomed to fail, makes very clear that the private, even the intimate is dominated by the political. The phrase coined in the 1960s, that ‘the personal is the political’ seems to carry its own meaning within the context of the violence and political problems suffered during The Troubles in Northern Ireland.

I am grateful to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book is set in Northern Ireland, Belfast, in the 1970’s in the midst of The Troubles.
Cushla last is a young catholic woman, she lives with her mother Gina who is an alcoholic. Cushla is a primary school teacher and in the evenings helps her brother in his pub, the pub clientele is a mixture from both sides of the community.
Cushla’s life becomes complicated as she try’s to help a young pupil, Davy, and his family, who have been on the receiving end of sectarian abuse, she is also having an affair with a married Protestant man and struggling to take care of her mother who continues her relationship with gin. Cushla is caught between her loyalties to her own community and the man she loves.
It’s a slow read, well written and the atmosphere of troubled Belfast in the 1970’s is captured.
Thanks to Net Galley and Bloomsbury Publishing Plc for an ARC of this book in exchange for a review.

This story of Cushla, a primary school teacher, against the backdrop of the Northern Irish troubles in the 1970's is as close to perfect as you can get. Kennedy has a magical way of ensuring the characters and their fates worm their way into your soul and leave you totally bereft.
We're immersed in the terrifying world of sectarian violence and how it impacts upon the community where Cushla lives, affecting every decision she makes. Hearing the children she teaches recount the horrifying news they are subjected to on a daily basis really brings home what life was like for those growing up in those harrowing times.
Essentially, this is a story about forbidden love. Catholic Cushla embarks on an affair with the Protestant Michael Agnew, a married barrister who takes risks with the cases he works on. You find your heart aches for them as their story continues. We also see how Cushla tries to care for Davey, a young boy in his class who comes from a 'mixed marriage' and how he has to deal with the bigots who won't accept his family.
This is complete masterpiece of writing; the narrative is completely striped back to the bare essentials and yet hauntingly beautiful. It deals with the issues of hatred, poverty and injustice and I was left completely devasted once I'd finished. Kennedy's writing takes us right back to the time and place. The tiny touches and details bring the settings to vivid 1970's life. I can't recommend this novel highly enough.
Thank you so much to Netgalley and the publishers for providing me with an ARC in return for an honest review.

Is this book my favourite book of the year so far? Quite possibly.

Set in 1975, Belfast, in the midst of the worst of The Troubles, Cushla Lavery is diving her time between her full-time job as a school teacher and helping out in her family bar which is remarkable for its Catholic ownership and Protestant customers. Cushla ends up falling into an affair with customer, and older, married man Michael, while also helping out a young pupil whose family have fallen on hard times.

I just loved this - there was hazy quality to the writing as it was set in the lead up to the summer holidays as the air got warmer, and Cushla's dreamlike, never going to end up, affair began which was all suffocating passion and obsession and never having enough of each other despite the danger. The atmosphere in this book is very tense, and therefore the story is so gripping as there is so much violence and anger everywhere in the story - the chapters begin with the headlines which are always centered around violence - bombings, shootings, the discovery of bodies - some of which are closer to home such as Davey McGowan's father Seamie's assault.

It definitely felt like there was a lot of foreshadowing in this book for bad things to come, and because of that, the snatches of joy Cushla experienced when she was with Michael, or her classroom of pupils felt all the more precious when writing it. I definitely felt the chemistry and connection between Cushla and Michael, and while their affair never felt anything but doomed, I wanted them to just run away together.

This book is wonderful, and so well written. There's parts of that have echoes of Milkman by Anna Burns but it's written in a much more accessible way for the everyday reader, and is not so intimidating.

There was something about this that I just couldn’t get into. I think I just struggled to click with the characters and as a result speed read the last quarter of the book.

It’s 1975 and the North of Ireland is tearing itself apart. Twenty Five year old Cushla Lavery lives with her mother and works part time at the family bar in a Garrison town, when she gets involved with a Protestant barrister nearly twice her age who asks her to teach him and a couple of his friends some Irish. Her other job is as a teacher and after an act of kindness towards a child who turns up at school with no coat, finds herself befriending a family from a mixed marriage living under constant threat in a loyalist housing estate.

Each school day begins with the news headlines, at the behest of the principal ‘to encourage children to be aware of the world around them.’ So these seven year olds start their day hearing ‘A booby trap bomb that was intended for a British Army patrol exploded prematurely, killing two boys near the border. They died instantly.’ It says something of my own memories that I thought this referred to something that happened in my own home town. There’s a mental rolodex of atrocities you can flick through. I was also a primary school child during the seventies and these were the headlines you were hearing constantly on the TV, radio or headlines in newspapers. As a characters says at one point, ‘Children here know too much.’

The writing is clear, sharp and crisp, conjuring up memories from my own school days.

‘Cushla doled out squat bottles of milk from the crate paddy the caretaker left bizarrely by the radiator every morning and told the children to take a few extra minutes. They lingered by her desk, ripping off he foil caps and stabbing their tongues into the inch of cream that had settled on top.’

The atmosphere in the book is often overwhelming and oppressive, and weighs heavy on the pages. It feels monochrome and battleship gray, something like the grainy pictures we see when there’s a flashback to these times on TV. But Louise Kennedy makes it feel fully alive, and vibrant, with such a strong sense of place and time, not like anything I’ve read in a while.

One of the things I did notice as I read was the occasional gaudy colour making an appearance, with ‘purple and orange dressing gowns,’ ‘three quarter length coat in orangey shade of tan,’ ‘wall tiles with orange geometric patterns.’

Speaking of orange, there’s also an interesting reference to Stanely Kubricks ‘A Clockwork Orange’, a film I was obsessed with in my teenage years, as well as Burgesses’ book of the same name. Micheal, the barrister mentions the ‘exquisite violence’ of the movie, and that Patrick Magee, who played the writer Frank Alexander in the movie, was from Armagh. I must admit I didn’t know this but I had seen the plaque in Edward St that marks his place of birth. There’s a bit of foreshadowing going on here as Alexander is left in a wheelchair after a horrific beating at the hands of Alex and his droogs, as a character in this book also suffers an act of extreme ‘ultra violence.’

The prose is sparse and lean, often startling in its clearness. And although the sentences might be short and pointed, there’s such emotion running through the book. There’s an incredible feeling of tension that builds throughout the book. Like the times themselves, tragedy and heartbreak were never too far away.

What’s also recognisable to anybody from the north reading the book is a the rich seam of black humour that runs throughout. This was much needed in terms of coping, of dealing with the psychological weight of the times. If you didn’t laugh, you’d crack up. Gina, Cushla’s alcoholic mother ( ‘Aye but I’m not a hundred percent today, said Gina. She was a hundred per cent hung over, eyeballs juicy, the skin around them puckered) is especially caustic. On the radio once morning we hear the announcer say:

‘The body of a man was found off the shore road by a woman out walking her dog.

‘I wouldn’t thank you for a dog, said Gina. You’d be odds-on to find a corpse.’

Another bit that made gave me a much needed laugh later, a place I also visited on a school trip:

Cushla and Gerry were bringing their classes to the park for a picnic; next year they would have a proper school trip, a visit to the safari park on the north coast, where the biggest attraction was a monkey that smoked benson and hedges.’

Some characters made my skin crawl. When Slattery the priest enters the story, I couldn’t wait until he exited stage left. He ‘roamed the playground and school corridors, entering the classroom unannounced to deliver his frightful catechism.’ There’s one great moment when he’s telling these young children about Loyalist murder gangs and their torture rooms , when a teacher bravely interjects with his guitar to start up a song.

I found Cushla a sympathetic character, juggling these intense emotions and all the other shit going on. The love affair gives the book a much needed lightness, even though the trespasses of the title refers to the ‘sin’ we’d associate with the bible. (Just thinking about it now, I suppose the other trespass relates to the McGeown family living where they did.) It feels like like the only hope that Cushla has, the only source of joy in her life and I wanted badly for it to continue for her. The affair felt real and intense.

It’s one of the best novels I’ve read on the north in some time. It’s painfully realistic to read, sometimes depressing, always brave, and tough going but that’s as it should be. At times it made me emotional and angry and I thought about things I hadn’t for such a long. A book from this period, told honestly, couldn’t really be anything else.

In the daytime, Cushla Lavery teaches seven-year-olds in a small town near Belfast, in the evening, she helps her brother in his pub. And in between, she makes sure that her alcohol addicted mother is still alive. There is not much happening in her life until, one evening, Michael Agnew shows up in the pub. He is a lot older than Cushla, but nevertheless, something sparks between them. Times are hard in Belfast when the war is raging in the streets and the news report deaths daily. Michael’s job as a barrister puts him at risk, yet, with Cushla, political tensions are far away. Until they aren’t anymore.

Louise Kennedy captures a life that is determined not by the person who lives it, but by outer circumstances. “Trespasses” oscillates between awful news and being alert all the time and intimacy which cannot exist openly. Her description of what people in the 1970s in Northern Ireland endured is full of brutality – but, I assume, absolutely accurate.

The most striking aspect of the novel was for me, how the characters organise their lives around the raging war around them. Cushla’s teaching that starts with a news session every morning which shows that even her 7-year-olds are familiar with the war vocabulary and for whom an assassination is just another death, just another family without a father, just another random note on the radio. The bluntness with which the author depicts these scenes is brutal and therefore gets close to the reader.

It is unimaginable how you can live and love in those circumstances, on the other hand, Cushla’s care for one of the boys whose family is seriously struggling underlines that in times like these, love and compassion is the only thing that’s left.

Definitely not an easy read but without a doubt one I can highly recommend.

I was blown away by this novel - straight away the tone really grabbed my attention. I loved Cushla as a character, she is so poised between naivety and irony throughout. Kennedy really brought the intricacies and complications of small-town life during such a turbulent, violent period of history to life, in a way that few writers manage successfully. I'm incredibly excited for this to be released and to be able to press it into people's hands - I really think it will have broad appeal across fans of both Sally Rooney and Douglas Stuart.