Alan Murrin’s assured debut is about the claustrophobia and cruelties of small town life. Set in County Donegal in 1994, when divorce was still illegal in Ireland, The Coast Road focuses on three women trapped by marriage.
Colette Crowley, a bohemian poet, left her husband, Shaun, and three sons after an affair with a married man in Dublin. At the start of the novel, she returns home, the relationship over, but Shaun refuses to let her visit their youngest child, who is still at school. She rents the Mullen family’s rundown cottage on the desolate coast road and tries to make ends meet by running creative writing workshops. Downtrodden Dolores Mullen is pregnant with her fourth child, while her philandering husband, Donal, watches their new neighbour with a predator’s eyes.
