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A poignant debut novel about the lives of women in a claustrophobic coast town and the search for independence in a society that seeks to limit it.
Set in 1994, The Coast Road tells the story of two women—Izzy Keaveney, a housewife, and Colette Crowley, a poet. Colette has left her husband and sons for a married man in Dublin. When she returns to her home in County Donegal to try to pick up the pieces of her old life, her husband, Shaun, a successful businessman, denies her access to her children.
The only way she can see them is with the help of neighbour Izzy, acting as a go-between. Izzy also feels caught in a troubled marriage. The friendship that develops between them will ultimately lead to tragedy for one, and freedom for the other.
Addictive as Big Little Lies with a depth and compassion that rivals the works of Claire Keegan, Elizabeth Strout, and Colm Tóibín, The Coast Road is a story about the limits placed on women's lives in Ireland only a generation ago, and the consequences women have suffered trying to gain independence. Award-winning Irish author Alan Murrin reminds us of the price we are forced to pay to find freedom.
What are you reading this week? (5/22/2025)
The Coast Road by Alan Murrin Just started it but so far it's quite good.
-Elizabeth_K
"[A] smashing debut...Each of the characters is vividly rendered, and Murrin excels at portraying the rippling consequences of small-town gossip and intolerance. This is a marvel." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Overstatement detracts from this compassionate depiction of hard times." —Kirkus Reviews
"The last great book I read ... an early proof of debut novelist Alan Murrin's The Coast Road, about women in '90s Ireland negotiating the complexities of marriage in a country where divorce is illegal. It will no doubt be a bestseller." —Actor Gillian Anderson
"Propelled by a gripping narrative and powerfully drawn characters The Coast Road makes for compulsive reading. Alan Murrin has written a poignant, utterly truthful story of passions prejudice and tragedy in a small town." —Gabriel Byrne, actor and author of Walking with Ghosts
"Alan Murrin is a gifted storyteller, his characters so fully realised I fretted for them as I read. A beautiful, accomplished debut." —Louise Kennedy, author of Trespasses
"Alan Murrin writes with the calm, poetic fluency of the best of Irish writers. The Coast Road is set in Donegal the year before divorce became legal in Ireland, and the many themes are equally—sadly—as relevant now. Women's autonomy is beautifully scrutinised in a shifting tempo that moves between rage, forgiveness, and hope. It's a stonkingly good novel. Just read it." —Sarah Winman, author of Still Life and Tin Man
This information about The Coast Road was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Alan Murrin is an Irish writer based in Berlin. His short story, "The Wake," won the 2021 Bournemouth Writing Prize and was shortlisted for short story of the year at the Irish Book Awards. The Coast Road was shortlisted for the PFD Queer Fiction prize. Murrin is also the recipient of an Irish Arts Council Agility Award and an Arts Council Literature Bursary. He is a graduate of the prose fiction masters at the University of East Anglia, and writes for the Irish Times and the Times Literary Supplement, as well as Art Review and e-flux.
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