Nell and her partner Adrienne are about to have a baby. For Adrienne, it’s the start of a new life. For Nell, it’s the reason the two of them are sitting in a therapist’s office. Because she can’t go into this without dealing with the truth: that she has been a mother before, and now can’t bring herself to speak to her own mother, let alone return home to Ireland.
But to Ireland is where she must go. To the heat of her teenage years in the early 2000s, as Ireland unpicks itself from its faith. To 1983, where her mother Dolores grapples with the tensions of the women’s rights movement. And finally, to the farms and suburbs and towns that made and unmade the lives at the centre of this story, bound together by the terrible secret Nell still cannot face.
Delving into the lives of three women in a changing Ireland, The Amendments is an extraordinary novel about love and freedom, belonging and rebellion – and about how our past is a vital presence which sits alongside us.
Reviews
Niamh Mulvey's wonderfully compelling characters and deft, clear prose offer great pleasure to the reader. Her sense of political and cultural change is sharp, and the beauty she finds in days of struggle is haunting.
- Joseph O'Connor, author of My Father's House and Star of the Sea
A smart, subtle, engrossing and moving novel that gives voice to so much that's unspoken about Ireland and about youth
- Emma Donoghue, playwright and literary scholar