Elaine’s debut novel, inventive, funny and sad, due out in April

These days, Galway seems to be producing talented writers of fiction at an astounding rate. There are few more talented on the poetry front than Elaine Feeney and the Athenry woman, who also teaches history in St Jarlath’s in Tuam, has now turned her hand to fiction. Elaine’s debut novel, As You Were is due to be published in April by Harvill Secker (an imprint of Penguin Random House). The publishing giant bought the manuscript at an auction last Autumn in London.

As You Were is set in a failing unnamed Galway Hospital and is based around the stories of three brilliant mad women, with the main character being Sinead Hynes, a tough, driven, funny young property developer with a terrifying secret. No-one knows about it: not her fellow patients  and certainly not her family. She has confided only in Google and a shiny magpie.

But Sinead can’t continue like this, tirelessly trying to outstrip her past and in mortal fear of her future.

Meanwhile, across the ward, Margaret Rose is running her chaotic family from her bed, via her rose-gold Nokia. In the neighbouring bed, Jane, rarely but piercingly lucid, is searching for a decent bra and for someone to listen. Sinead needs them both.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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