Lazy City

(Paperback, Export/Airside - Export/Airside/Ireland)

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Description

Following the death of her best friend, Erin has to get out of London. Returning home to Belfast, an au pair job provides a partial refuge from her grief and her volatile relationship with her mother. She spends late nights at the bar where her old friend Declan works, and there Erin meets an American academic who is also looking to get lost. Her unlikely, secretive relationship with religion offers a different kind of sanctuary altogether.Lazy City explores coming of age in a place where everyone is picking up the pieces and belongs to a generation that, at the precipice of climate crisis, isn't going to get the future it was expecting. A startlingly fresh and original voice - jarringly funny, sometimes cranky, often hungover - Rachel Connolly sharply depicts the strange, meandering aftermath that follows disaster.

Reviews

'Somehow both tightly controlled and highly spontaneous, Rachel Connolly's Lazy City is refreshingly open to the world. Frank, attentive, free of artifice or emotional contrivances, Connolly brings something new to any subject she shines her singular intelligence on' - NICOLE FLATTERY

'In the wry and compassionate Lazy City, Rachel Connolly deftly captures both the intoxicating chaos and listlessness of young adulthood, when life seems both full of possibility and impossibly elusive' - COLIN BARRETT

'This restless, big-hearted, accomplished novel examines the delicate, elaborate fabric of communication after grief. In a voice that is skirting, comic and attentive, Lazy City embodies the traits I admire in Rachel Connolly's writing: its charisma, nervous energy and verve' - LUCIE ELVEN

'Absolutely LOVED IT. A coming of age novel set in Belfast and delivered in the most beautifully clear and engaging prose' - FRANKIE BOYLE

'Startling, propulsive and bracingly funny, Lazy City is a powerful debut by a gifted writer. Every word of it feels real and true in a way that only the most skilfully imagined fiction can. It feels like a book that needed to exist. I loved it' - MARK O'CONNELL

Author Bio

Rachel Connolly was born in 1993 in Belfast and now lives in London. She has written for the New York Times, New York Magazine, the Guardian and many other publications. She has also featured as a guest to discuss her work on This American Life and several BBC radio programs.