As You Were

Elaine Feeney

$16.95

Publication Date: October 5th, 2021

Publisher:

Biblioasis

ISBN:

9781771964432

Pages:

400

Available in 3-7 business days

I challenge you to not get emotionally invested in the rich, raw, and devastating lives of the characters in this debut novel. I will be thinking about the patients in this hospital ward for a long time to come.

Kelly Shrader, Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, WA

October 2021 Indie Next List

Elaine Feeney’s As You Were is an absolute rollercoaster! Always funny, at times deeply emotional, this unconventional novel explores motherhood, illness, friendship, and marriage in a way that’s rarely so direct and relatable.

Kasey Kane Charbonneau, Country Bookshelf, Bozeman, MT

Winter 2022 Reading Group Indie Next List

Description

Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize - Winner of the 2021 Kate O'Brien Award - Winner of the 2021 Dalkey Emerging Writer Award

Sin ad Hynes is a tough, driven, funny young property developer with a terrifying secret. No-one knows it: not her fellow patients in a failing hospital, and certainly not her family. She has confided only in Google and a shiny magpie. But she can't go on like this, tirelessly trying to outstrip her past and in mortal fear of her future. Across the ward, Margaret Rose is running her chaotic family from her rose-gold Nokia. In the neighbouring bed, Jane, rarely but piercingly lucid, is searching for a decent bra and for someone to listen. And Sin ad needs them both.

As You Were is about intimate histories, institutional failures, the kindness of strangers, and the darkly present past of modern Ireland; about women's stories and women's struggles; about seizing the moment to be free. Wildly funny, desperately tragic, inventive and irrepressible, As You Were introduces a brilliant voice in Irish fiction with a book that is absolutely of our times.

About the Author

Elaine Feeney is an award-winning writer from Galway and teaches at The National University of Ireland, Galway. She has published three collections of poetry, including The Radio was Gospel and Rise and the award-winning drama, WRoNGHEADED with The Liz Roche Company. As You Were, her debut novel, was published in 2020 by Vintage in the UK and in 2021 by Biblioasis in North America. It was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and was included in The Guardian's top debut novels for 2020. It appeared widely in best books of 2020 including in The Telegraph, The Irish Independent, The Evening Standard, The Guardian, The Observer and The Irish Times.