A gripping tale of love across the divide, Trespasses – which has been shortlisted for this year’s Women’s prize – is the debut novel of Louise Kennedy, a former chef who began writing in her mid 40s. Set in a garrison town near Belfast in 1975, it revolves around 24-year-old Cushla Lavery, a Catholic primary school teacher who also helps out behind the bar at the family pub. There she meets Michael Agnew, a married Protestant barrister who is twice her age and who defends Catholic men he believes have been unjustly arrested.
The two begin an affair that unfolds against a backdrop of sectarian violence. Every day, Cushla watches her prison officer neighbour comb his car for explosives; at school, the headteacher insists pupils look at the news headlines, which read as an inventory of human brutality. “Booby trap. Incendiary device. Gelignite. Nitroglycerine. Petrol bomb. Rubber bullets … The vocabulary of a seven-year-old child now.”
When the father of Davy McGeown, one of Cushla’s favourite students, is beaten nearly to death on his estate for being in a “mixed” marriage, she takes it upon herself to help Davy and his siblings, an act of compassion that creates fractures in her community. Trespasses is narrated by the Irish actor Bríd Brennan, who delivers a smart and subtle reading, capturing the rising tension caused by the torn loyalties of its protagonists. Kennedy, meanwhile, displays a chef’s attention to detail in her unshowy but vivid prose. Her book builds to a remarkable denouement that stays with the listener long after it is finished.
• Trespasses is available via Bloomsbury, 8hr 57min
Further listening
Lady MacBethad
Isabelle Schuler, Raven, 12hr 16min
This suspenseful novel imagines the backstory of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth. Here, Macbeth’s conniving spouse is the granddaughter of druids, the daughter of an ousted king and is, initially, betrothed to Duncan. Sara Vickers narrates.
Mayflies
Andrew O’Hagan, Faber, 7hr 26min
The Scottish author reads his moving novel, recently adapted for TV, about two boyhood friends whose bond endures into adulthood.
