Stations

“A propulsive, powerful novel about first love and regret.” – Min Jin Lee, author of Pachinko

“I gulped this down - convinced, fascinated, and moved by every page.” –Emma Donoghue, author of Room

A woman is haunted by the unsettled boy who befriended her as an outcast teenager, long after he drifts out of reach

In 1980s Ireland, Róisín and Red bond as only two precocious and disaffected teenagers can. Soon he is privy to the secret source of her shame and anger: the father who’s abandoned her and her mother to their damp house and never-ending strife. But what does Róisín know about why Red avoids going home to his own posh parents and house—the house he soon flees forever?

When a Christmas visit to her father reveals the devastating truth of his new life in London, Róisín tracks down Red and moves into his Pimlico squat. But the path he is now on is a disturbing one, and gradually they drift apart. And yet the great, never-consummated passion of her youth remains a visitation upon the years that follow. Will Róisín ever stop longing for Red? Will she ever learn to let someone else love her—or learn to love herself?

Stations is a gorgeous, wrenching novel about the terrible—and sometimes redemptive—power with which the past hovers over the present.