Rockadoon Shore

(Paperback)

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'Rockadoon Shore is terrific' Roddy Doyle

'One of the most exciting Irish storytellers to have emerged in years' Gavin Corbett

Cath is worried about her friends. DanDan is struggling with the death of his ex, Lucy is drinking way too much and Steph has become closed off. A weekend away is just what they need so they travel out to Rockadoon Lodge, to the wilds in the west of Ireland.

But the weekend doesn't go to plan. JJ is more concerned with getting high than spending time with them, while Merc is humiliated and seeks revenge. And with long-ignored tensions now out in the open, their elderly neighbour Malachy arrives on their doorstep with a gun in his hands . . .

Honest, moving and human, ROCKADOON SHORE is a novel about friendship and youth, about missed opportunities and lost love, and about the realities of growing up and growing old in modern-day Ireland. Highly energetic and tensely humorous, it heralds a new and exciting voice in contemporary Irish fiction.

Reviews

Rory Gleeson brilliantly nails the self-obsession of the young and entitled in this sharply observed tale of sex, drugs and Rockadoon Shore. A brand new and welcome voice speaking for the disenchanted and disaffected - Liz Nugent

Fierce, funny, vivid, and compelling from the first line. Rory Gleeson is one of the most exciting Irish storytellers to have emerged in years - Gavin Corbett

In a novel that captures the self-obsession of the young, Rory Gleeson proves himself to be an exciting storyteller - Irish Country Living Magazine

Rockadoon Shore is terrific. It's full of surprises and sharp writing, great belts of dialogue, and a gang of characters who manage to be likeable and unlikeable, clever and thick, loud and vulnerable, entertaining and very, very real - Roddy Doyle

Fresh in its unpredictability . . . gutsy and ambitious - Guardian

Crackling with wit and fine writing, this distinctive debut novel gives us a 360-degree perspective on the anxieties, self doubts and fissures within the group as underlying tensions inevitably rise to the surface. An exuberant dispatch from the front line of youthful narcissism and despair - Mail on Sunday

Rockadoon Shore, a saga about young people traversing the early years of adulthood and the decisions we make in life, is very much built to fit into the Irish literary-fiction domain where Donal Ryan and Lisa McInerney dwell. The average and everyday is honed in on, plumbed for truths and signposts about the workings of the mind and heart, and all by way of elusively functional language, coarse on the outside but lined with silk when you peer beneath . . . Gleeson is only getting off the ground, but his sensitivity is reason enough to sit up and take notice - Irish Sunday Independent

Think early Big Brother meets Friends, with a sprinkling of fish-out-of-water countryside farce a la Withnail & I . . . The decimation of communities, the hollowing out of a whole way of life: this melancholic backdrop is only lightly adumbrated, but it hints at a keen and socially attentive writerly sensibility, which will hopefully be more expansively showcased in due course - Irish Times

Author Bio

Rory Gleeson was born in Dublin in 1989. He has a BA in Psychology from Trinity College Dublin and an MA in Creative Writing from UEA. He lives in Toronto.