Kenneth Branagh’s Oscar-winning recent film Belfast chronicles the travails of a Protestant family amid sectarian conflict in 1969. Louise Kennedy’s much hyped first novel, set outside Belfast in 1975, explores the same tensions from a different perspective. Like her protagonist Cushla, Kennedy’s Catholic family owned a pub in a Protestant-majority town, and Trespasses captures how it feels to be outnumbered and under scrutiny.
Kennedy’s career is enough to inspire anyone. A chef for 30 years, she only began writing at 47, but her ascent since is far from typical: nine publishers fought over her debut short story collection The End of the World is a Cul de Sac and she has twice been shortlisted for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award. In lockdown, her straight-talking tweets went viral, and Trespasses crackles with the same blunt humour.
We meet Cushla, aged 24, teaching seven-year-olds at a Catholic primary school (and fending off Father Slattery’s fire-and-brimstone interventions) while trying to limit her mother’s gin consumption and pulling pints at the pub her brother inherited from their recently deceased father.
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