Rating: 4/5

I’ve been extremely excited to read this debut novel by Lisa McInerney, having known her briefly through one of my best friends during our student days in Cork City many moons ago. It is fantastic to see someone from home doing so well and Lisa has received rave reviews for her novel, which has recently won the Baileys Women’s Prize For Fiction 2016.

The Glorious Heresies is set in Cork City and revolves around a multitude of shady characters who interconnect through various dark circumstances. The opening of the novel sets the bleak tone of the story with the killing of a man by fifty nine year old Maureen, who arranges for her son Jimmy to sort out her unfortunate predicament. Being the most feared gangster in Cork City, Jimmy has no shortage of henchmen to do his dirty work for him. He quickly finds someone willing to clean up Maureen’s mess and this leads to a sequence of events that changes many of the characters’ lives forever.

Jimmy’s childhood friend Tony, father of six children and an alcoholic, comes to Jimmy’s assistance, being in desperate need of the money. Tony’s teenage son is already dipping his toes into the gangland world. Of course, things don’t always go to plan, especially when Georgie, the girlfriend of the dead man, starts to question why her boyfriend has vanished.

Admittedly, I wasn’t sure about this book on my initial reading. The novel is so dark and depressing and portrays a side of Cork City that I’m relieved to say I have never witnessed. However, I soon became immersed in the gritty underworld of gangland Cork and was intrigued to see where the story would take these characters. There is an inevitable feeling that nothing bodes well for any of these characters and many of their actions lead them down a dark path.

This is not a book for the fainthearted. Drugs, murder, prostitution, violence, sex and coarse language feature predominantly throughout the novel. However, this serves to accurately portray the harsh realism of the criminal underworld. While it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, I became drawn to the people in the story and willed characters such as Ryan and Georgie to turn their lives around and move on from the sort of lifestyles that were dragging them down. The novel is realistic in the way it shows how difficult it is to break the cycle and escape from that sort of environment.

Despite the bleak tone of the novel, it has moments of witty humour and glimmers of hope for certain characters. It is certainly different from anything I’ve read before and I’m excited to see what Lisa McInerney does next. Long may her well deserved success continue.

Have you read The Glorious Heresies? What did you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts!