Jun 7

Jun 7 Trespasses

Author: Louise Kennedy
Publisher: Riverhead
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

Set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, a shattering novel about a young woman caught between allegiance to community and a dangerous passion.

Amid daily reports of violence, Cushla lives a quiet life with her mother in a small town near Belfast. By day she teaches at a parochial school; at night she fills in at her family's pub. There she meets Michael Agnew, a barrister who's made a name for himself defending IRA members. Against her better judgment — Michael is not only Protestant but older, and married — Cushla lets herself get drawn in by him and his sophisticated world, and an affair ignites. Then the father of a student is savagely beaten, setting in motion a chain reaction that will threaten everything, and everyone, Cushla most wants to protect.

As tender as it is unflinching, Trespasses is a heart-pounding, heart-rending drama of thwarted love and irreconcilable loyalties, in a place what you come from seems to count more than what you do, or whom you cherish.

TL;DR Review

Trespasses is a well-written, intentionally tense novel about choice, conflict, and community. I wasn’t quite in the right headspace for it, but there’s no denying its merits.

For you if: You are interested in novels set during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Full Review

Shortlisted for the 2023 Women’s Prize, Trespasses is a well-written, character-driven novel about the ripple effect of personal choices on a tight-knit community, especially during times of political unrest (in this case, the Troubles in Northern Ireland). I think that I was perhaps not quite in the right mindset for this one, so it didn’t blow me away, but I certainly enjoyed it and have a lot of respect for what it pulls off.

The novel takes place in a small town outside Belfast around 1975. The main character is a young Catholic schoolteacher named Cushla who begins an affair with an older, married, Protestant barrister (lawyer) named Michael. She also finds herself a bit too involved in the home life of one of her less fortunate students, Davy. Of course, all that hardly lends itself to stasis even without the Troubles; eventually, the precariousness of the situation implodes.

This kind of felt like Milkman meets Shuggie Bain. That explains why critics loved it and I only liked it (I was lukewarm on Milkman but loved Shuggie). I feel like I’ve read a lot of novels lately about young women making morally gray choices, and a lot about the Troubles, so maybe that’s why it didn’t stand out as much in my mind. I also thought I was picking up on a couple of hints at the end that ended up being red herrings or just wrong assumptions about where the story was going; the actual execution made less sense to me, plot-wise, than what I’d assumed, which left me a little unsatisfied.

Lest you think I disliked this book, I will say that I very much appreciated how Kennedy managed to show both sides of the conflict with nuance, more like what I imagine it would have been to live in a mixed community than history or the press can convey. I also appreciated the way she brought the question of class into the mix of themes — this was very well done. Finally, I gotta hand it to the narrator of the audiobook, who read the story beautifully and authentically.

If you like Irish literature, especially about the Troubles, this one might be for you.