Amendments

In London, Nell’s partner wants to have a baby. She also wants to know why Nell hasn’t been home to Ireland to see her family for so long, and why she won’t speak to her mother. They’ve ended up in a therapist’s office to get to the bottom of it all, and Nell is running out of places to hide from her past. But how can she even begin to explain what happened back then? About the Movement, the boy, the last baby, all of the grief. And Martina, what could she say about that gentle, kind woman she looked up to most throughout her teenage years, who she brought her troubles to when her mother just didn’t understand, who provided guidance but who ruined everything in the end? How could Nell face the truth she has secretly come to recognize after all this time, that maybe she is to blame for it all? And given how the women in her family have failed at successful mother-daughter relationships for decades back now, what hope do she and this new baby have? Delving into the lives of three generations of women, The Amendments shows how Ireland has changed and how it hasn’t. As the country debated the rights of women, over and over, girls tried to decide their own fates in bedrooms and at the kitchen table. The Amendments is an extraordinary debut novel about freedom and compassion, belonging and rebellion – and about how our past is a living, breathing thing which sits alongside us always.