A searingly powerful novel about passion and isolation, about the nature of belief, about love and motherhood, for fans of Ali Smith and Maggie O’Farrell
In a church in Battersea, Mary-Margaret O’Reilly sees blood on her hands and believes she has witnessed a miracle. The consequences are both profound and devastating – not just for her but for others, too: Father Diamond, the parish priest, struggling with his own faith. Stella, adrift in her marriage and aching for her ten-year old son, away at boarding school. Alice, counting the days until her soldier son comes home. And Mary-Margaret’s mother, imprisoned in a tower block with nothing but her thoughts for company… What happens to Mary-Margaret will send ripples through this tight community, raising questions about the nature of devotion – in all its forms – and the cost of loving in a confusing world.
‘Unfailingly gripping, filled with the essential ingredients – tension and emotion.‘ Patricia Duncker, LITERARY REVIEW
‘Beautifully musical sentences with carefully judged rhythms.’ Philip Womack, DAILY TELEGRAPH
‘Skillfully constructed and beautifully written.’ Peter Parker, SUNDAY TIMES
In a church in Battersea, Mary-Margaret O’Reilly sees blood on her hands and believes she has witnessed a miracle. The consequences are both profound and devastating – not just for her but for others, too: Father Diamond, the parish priest, struggling with his own faith. Stella, adrift in her marriage and aching for her ten-year old son, away at boarding school. Alice, counting the days until her soldier son comes home. And Mary-Margaret’s mother, imprisoned in a tower block with nothing but her thoughts for company… What happens to Mary-Margaret will send ripples through this tight community, raising questions about the nature of devotion – in all its forms – and the cost of loving in a confusing world.
‘Unfailingly gripping, filled with the essential ingredients – tension and emotion.‘ Patricia Duncker, LITERARY REVIEW
‘Beautifully musical sentences with carefully judged rhythms.’ Philip Womack, DAILY TELEGRAPH
‘Skillfully constructed and beautifully written.’ Peter Parker, SUNDAY TIMES
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Reviews
An intense and penetrating exploration of power, isolation, community and faith
Kay leads us out to sea in calm waters and then leaves us to battle the waves where religion is by turns a prop, powerful, life-affirming and damaging.
This delicate second novel from the talented writer centres on an unhappily married mother and explores unexpected questions about the dangers and consolations of faith.
Kay's superbly intelligent literary novel examines faith and delusion in luminous prose.
compelling for anyone interested in how and why religion does or does not work, and the abuses committed in the name of faith.
Francesca Kay's power lies in the shock of deliberate understatement. Her narrative is underpinned by compassion, even when at its most appalling.
This is a fine work from an accomplished author, and its treatment of the thorny subject of religious fervour is well done.
With its fine-grained pattern of voices, its relish for the jostlings of inner-city life and its tender lyricism, the novel offers insight and uplift but no mystical schmaltz.
The author marries acute observation of character and place to a mastery of the silent spaces in which dwell hope and, sometimes, its absence.
Elegant and perfectly paced... written with great sensitivity and intelligence.
That feeling of local magic and mystery has been artfully captured.