The most enchanting novel you'll read this year, from the acclaimed author of Man Booker-longlisted History of the Rain.
After dropping out of the seminary, seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe finds himself back in Faha; a small Irish parish where nothing ever changes, including the ever-falling rain. But one morning the rain stops and news reaches the parish - the electricity is finally arriving. With it comes a lodger to Noel's home, Christy McMahon.
Though he can't explain it, Noel knows right then: something has changed. As Noel navigates his coming-of-age by Christy's side, falling in and out of love, Christy's buried past gradually comes to light, casting a glow on a small world and making it new.
Shortlisted for Best Novel in the Irish Book Awards
Longlisted for the 2020 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
'Lyrical, tender and sumptuously perceptive' Sunday Times
'A love letter to the sleepy, unhurried and delightfully odd Ireland that is all but gone' Irish Independent
ISBN 9781526609359
'Weren't you never out for an easy dip?' he asked... 'I don't mean the baths, I mean with a pal. For a lark like.' Out at the Forty Foot, that great jut of Dublin rock where gentlemen bathe in the scandalous nude, two boys meet day after day. There they make a pact: that Doyler will teach Jim to swim, and in a year, they will swim the bay to the distant beacon of the Muglins rock, to raise the Green and claim it for themselves. As a turbulent year drives inexorably towards the Easter Rising of 1916 and Ireland sets forth on a path to uncertain glory, a tender, secret love story unfolds.
Written with verve and mastery in a modern Irish tradition descended from James Joyce and Flann O'Brien, At Swim, Two Boys is a shimmering novel of unforgettable ambition, intensity and humanity.
'One of the greatest Irish novels ever written' David Marcus, 'The music of Jamie O'Neill's prose creates a new Irish symphony' Peter Ackroyd, 'Heartachingly beautiful' Independent on Sunday, 'A vivid picture of human freedom' Sunday Times.
ISBN 9780743207140