The Coast Road

January 1, 2024

Debuter Murrin mines the rocky path women walked in Ireland in the '90s when divorce was illegal. Colette Crowley has an affair, and her husband denies her access to her children. Neighbor Izzy Keaveney offers help--with consequences for all. With a 150K-copy first printing and TV rights optioned. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 29, 2024
Murrin’s smashing debut follows two unhappily married women in a small town in Ireland as they test the bounds of independence. In 1994, Izzy Keaveney heads to mass after a night spent fighting with her husband, James, over his refusal to support her wish to reopen her flower shop, which she ran until the birth of their first child, who’s now a teen. At church, she encounters poet Colette Crowley, who has recently returned from Dublin and whose husband, Shaun, has banned her from seeing their three sons ever since she had an affair and announced she was leaving him some months earlier. When Colette starts a writing workshop in town, Izzy enrolls, and after class one evening, she agrees to help Colette secretly meet with one of her sons. After Shaun learns what Colette’s up to, he forbids her from making a promised Christmas visit, pleads with James to put a stop to Izzy’s meddling, and intimates to him that Izzy is having an affair with the new parish priest. Heartbroken, Colette drinks heavily and stumbles into an affair with her married landlord, whose wife is pregnant; meanwhile, Izzy considers separating from James. Each of the characters is vividly rendered, and Murrin excels at portraying the rippling consequences of small-town gossip and intolerance. This is a marvel. Agent: Anna Stein, CAA.

May 15, 2024
Irish writer Murrin's debut novel offers a page-turning portrait of life in Donegal--often called the "forgotten county." It is 1995, and Ireland is on the verge of overturning a ban on divorce. Poet Colette Crowley has returned to town after leaving her comfortable marriage for another man. She rents a cottage, tries to earn money by holding writing workshops, and regrets her irreversible ruin. Not one to shy away from making controversial friends is Izzy, a politician's wife with provincial taste but a sharp wit. There's also Dolores, young wife to a philandering husband, whose fourth pregnancy makes her feel more trapped than ever, and Ann, a waitress in love with Colette's jilted husband. Throughout, Murrin dangles the mystery of a house fire alluded to early on, yet the true center is the question of a woman's agency. What value does life hold when the state bars so many choices? Through these women, Murrin explores a fascinating community on the verge of liberating change.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 15, 2024
In Ardglas, a small Irish town, women are struggling with their marriages and their choices in the mid-1990s. Three wives in particular are the focus of Murrin's debut, which looks empathetically on the women's cramped lives and options. Izzy Keaveney has been fighting, off and on, with her husband, James, for more than 20 years and suffers periods of depression. Frustrated that James gave away the lease to her florist business and now refuses to buy it back, she's recently found a more simpatico male presence in the form of parish priest Father Brian Dempsey. Dolores Mullen, mother of three and pregnant again, has long endured the cruelty and promiscuity of her husband, Donal, who constantly demeans and criticizes her. Poet Colette Crowley took the unusual step of leaving her husband, Shaun, and their three sons to have an affair in Dublin. But now she's back, regretful, short of cash, and keen to make amends with the children. (The unavailability of divorce in Ireland during the main part of the book is intrinsic to the story.) The friendship that forms between Izzy and Colette also becomes a vehicle for Colette to spend time secretly with her youngest child, but when Shaun finds out, he strikes back. Meanwhile, Donal is sleeping with Colette, and James, threatened by the intimacy between Izzy and Brian, uses his heft as a politician to have the priest removed from the parish. The wives are the fuller characters in Murrin's gloomy depiction of a stifling, gossipy, traditional community, whereas the men, Brian excepted, emerge badly and more thinly. Colette, falling apart, and Izzy, taking a stand, personify the extremes of their options, one ultimately tragic, the other more accommodating, in a downbeat story, closely observed but shaded with a heavy hand. Overstatement detracts from this compassionate depiction of hard times.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.