Holding Her Breath
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- £8.99
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE JOHN MCGAHERN PRIZE 2022
This critically acclaimed debut will be a guaranteed hit with literary fiction lovers this Christmas.
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A young woman comes of age in the shadow of her family's tragic past
When Beth Crowe starts university, she is shadowed by the ghost of her potential as a competitive swimmer. Free to create a fresh identity for herself, she finds herself among people who adore the poetry of her grandfather, Benjamin Crowe, who died tragically before she was born. She embarks on a secret relationship - and on a quest to discover the truth about Benjamin and his widow, her beloved grandmother Lydia. The quest brings her into an archive that no scholar has ever seen, and to a person who knows things about her family that nobody else knows.
Holding Her Breath is a razor-sharp, moving and seriously entertaining novel about complicated love stories, ambition and grief - and a young woman coming fully into her powers.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2021
SHORTLISTED FOR THE KATE O'BRIEN AWARD 2022
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'A stunning debut from this new Irish talent' STELLAR
'A beautiful coming-of-age story told with impressive skill and lightness of touch . . . I absolutely loved it' LOUISE O'NEILL
'Whip smart observations and addictive prose' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
'Precise, sure, engaging, and a joy to read' RODDY DOYLE
'A moving debut with a satisfying conclusion' IRISH INDEPENDENT
'Brilliant, vivid - I enjoyed this book ENORMOUSLY' MARIAN KEYES
'Enthralling' IMAGE
'A nimble account of student life with a darkly enjoyable undercurrent of secrecy and emotional turmoil' SARA BAUME
'A truly compelling read, and one I wholeheartedly recommend' BUZZ
'Through the dark sky of our times, Eimear Ryan arrives like a comet, a bright talent scorching through every page' DOIREANN NÍ GHRÍOFA, author of A Ghost in the Throat
'Brilliantly realised, gripping, and moving . . . This is absolutely the real thing' KEVIN POWER
'Written with a wonderful clarity and insight, Holding Her Breath lingers in the imagination. Beth's unravelling and re-ravelling is drawn with great skill and empathy. A brilliant debut' DONAL RYAN
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An Irish collegiate swimmer unearths the truth about her grandfather, a famous poet, in Ryan's penetrating debut. Beth Crowe, 20, is just starting university away from home on a sports scholarship, and is slowly acclimating after an undisclosed crisis. She meets Justin Kelleher, an older postdoc lecturer who is curious about the archives of famed poet Benjamin Crowe, Beth's grandfather who died by suicide at age 43 after completing his collection Roslyn, later declared his masterwork. As Beth settles into swimming and schoolwork, she begins a secret affair with Justin while trying to find out more about her grandparents. She's close to her grandmother, Lydia, who previously barred Justin from viewing Benjamin's archives. Eventually, she makes an allowance for Beth, and Beth discovers the unpublished biography of Benjamin by Julie Conlon-Hayes, a friend of her grandparents who was rumored to have had an affair with Benjamin. As tensions from her personal life come to a head, Beth begins to wonder if she's inherited her grandfather's self-destructive tendencies. Despite some underdeveloped plot points, Ryan's strong character-building and intriguing narrative parallels keep this afloat. Readers will want to see what Ryan does next.
