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Academy Street
Published 27 August 2014
ISBN 9781922182449
Format Trade Paperback
Extent 192pp
AU Price $27.99
NZ Price $35.00

Academy Street

Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
27 Aug 2014
EBook
27 Aug 2014
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This is an intimate story about unexpected gifts and unbearable losses, and the perpetual ache for belonging. It is exquisitely written and profoundly moving.

Academy Street is the heart-breaking and evocative story of one woman's life spanning six decades.

Tess's childhood in 1940's rural Ireland is defined by the sudden death of her mother. Later, in New York, she encounters the ferocious power and calamity of love, and the effects of catastrophic fate.

The novel resonates with the rhythms of memory and home as well as those of America's greatest city.
Published 27 August 2014
ISBN 9781922182449
Format Trade Paperback
Extent 192pp
AU Price $27.99
NZ Price $35.00

About the author

Mary Costello

Mary Costello’s short story collection, The China Factory, was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award and shortlisted for an Irish Book Award. Her first novel, Academy Street, won the Irish Novel of the Year Award and was named overall Irish Book of the Year in 2014. The River Capture, her second novel, was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards, the Kerry Group Awards and the Dalkey Book Awards. Mary Costello lives in Galway.
portrait photo of Mary Costello

Also by Mary Costello

A Beautiful Loan
The River Capture
The China Factory
See all

Praise for Academy Street

With extraordinary devotion, Mary Costello brings to life a woman who would otherwise have faded into oblivion amid the legions of the meek and the unobtrusive

JM Coetzee

I read Academy Street cover to cover in one night, unable to stop. It is a short novel about a long life, stretching from rural Ireland to post-9/11 New York, and brings to mind the elegance of Colm Toibin and the insight of Alice Munro. Its stealthy, quiet power will exert a hold over any reader

Maggie O'Farrell

Intensely moving but never sentimental, Academy Street is a profound meditation on what Faulkner called 'the human heart in conflict with itself.' In Tess Lohan, Mary Costello has created one of the most fully realised characters in contemporary fiction. What a marvel of a book

Ron Rash

To recount a life story in a novel is a difficult task. To do so with brevity and unsentimental honesty takes greatness. A powerful and emotional novel from one of literature's finest new voices

John Boyne

Academy Street is understated, graceful and, ultimately, devastating. Even as my heart was breaking I couldn't put the book down

Donal Ryan