BOOK OF THE YEARThe Coast Road by Alan Murrin
Voted as our favourite fiction release of 2024 by nb.'s subscribers and contributors, The Coast Road is a compelling insight into a small community and the devastating consequences of swimming against the unrelenting tide of societal norms.
It's 1994 in County Donegal, Ireland, and everyone is talking about Colette Crowley – the writer, the bohemian, the woman who left her husband and sons to pursue a relationship with a married man in Dublin. But now Colette is back, and nobody knows why.
Returning to the community to try and reclaim her old life, Colette quickly learns that they are unwilling to give it back to her. The man to whom she is still married is denying her access to her children, and while the legalisation of divorce might be just around the corner, Colette finds herself caught between her old life and the freedom for which she risked everything. Desperate to see her children, she enlists the help of Izzy, a housewife and mother of two, and the women forge a friendship that will send them on a spiralling journey – one toward a path of self-discovery, and the other toward tragedy.
Sign up to our book subscriptions to receive our Book of the Year!
A CONVERSATION WITH ALAN MURRIN‘I wanted to tell the readers, fasten your seatbelts, you’re in for a bumpy ride.’
We were lucky enough to talk to Alan Murrin, the debut author of The Coast Road, a few days after his book was announced as our book of the year.
In our chat, we cover the his first memories of writing on a typewriter, the impossibility of being a single woman in a small rural town in Ireland, and why being dull is one of the worst things an Irish person can be accused of.
‘She is naive and full of love and hope and glamour, and everyone loves glamour.’
OUR REVIEWThe Coast Road
Reviewed by Suzanne Smith
The Coast Road is the astounding debut novel from new literary talent, Alan Murrin. Set in 1994 County Donegal, before divorce was legalised in Ireland, it’s about the cost of independence for the women trapped in a claustrophobic coastal town.
The story focuses on the return of Colette Crowley, the writer and free spirit who left her husband and children to pursue an affair with a married man in Dublin. Her departure has become as folkloric in the town as a Yeats poem (something she leans into by later naming her rented cottage “Innisfree”), but is Colette truly as wild and bohemian as she presents? How could a mother walk out on her family? How can she show her face again? These are the questions that linger in a community confined by dogma and tradition. Now prevented from seeing her sons by her estranged husband, Colette strikes up a friendship with Izzy Keaveney, the unhappy housewife of a local politician, in the hope that she’ll help her reconnect with them. This friendship unlocks new dreams and desires for both Colette and Izzy but soon descends into something tragic that will change the course of their lives forever.
The melancholic and stifling atmosphere of The Coast Road is helped along by short, vignette-like chapters, which dip in and out of different characters’ inner lives and build a sense of the suffocating gossip that governs their existence. With each changing perspective, we learn of long-held secrets, lies and betrayals, and our access to these intimate moments is reminiscent of the Catholic confessional box – a place a lot of the characters spend their time. Murrin’s well-observed characters fight against the overwhelming sadness and disappointment that beats under the surface of their ordinary lives
Beautiful and profound, The Coast Road sits in relationship with some of the best contemporary writing coming from Ireland right now. Fans of Claire Keegan, Colm Tóibín and Louise Kennedy will love it.