DJ turned novelist Annie Macmanus described her bestselling debut, Mother Mother, as a love letter to Belfast. Her second book, The Mess We’re In, channels an evocative rush of feeling for another capital central to the Irish experience, London. How to go about finding your place within such a city is a question that drives this immersive, music-infused coming-of-age story.
It begins as its narrator, 21-year-old Dubliner Orla, arrives in turn-of-the-millennium London to share a house with her best friend, law student Neema, and the members of Shiva, an up-and-coming band fronted by Neema’s brother. Within the first few chapters, enough pills, tabs and cocaine are consumed to fuel a rave, enabling the housemates to overlook the black mould covering the kitchen and the mice nesting in cereal boxes – but their relationships with one another soon become equally messy.
