Home ⋅ Published Books ⋅ Assembling Ailish: Some secrets are simply too hard to hold. They fester. They break you.

Assembling Ailish: Some secrets are simply too hard to hold. They fester. They break you.
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By: Sharon Guard
Publisher: Poolbeg Press Ltd
Published: January 2025
Pages: 231
Categories: Fiction, Literature
Language: English
Available as: Paperback, Audio
On sale at:
ISBN-13: 9781781996775

An honest, heartfelt exploration of love, loss, and the bravery to face your demons. ‘A beautiful and important novel, an incisive, insightful study of childhood, motherhood, obligation, guilt, and the impossibility of true freedom from the circular pain of existence, but all lit by a blaze of love and hope’ DONAL RYAN ‘A gripping and skilful debut from a hugely talented storyteller’ JOSEPH O’CONNOR ‘Uplifting and powerful – a stunning debut from a gifted new voice’ FERDIA MAC ANNA ‘An evocative story from a fresh new voice about life, love, hard-won wisdom and learning to forgive’ MARTINA DEVLIN Ailish McCarthy is not doing well. Outwardly successful – career, beautiful home, wealthy husband, two daughters reared and on the cusp of their own lives– inwardly she is crumbling. Her relationship with her mother was complicated and difficult, the grief following her death unnaturally prolonged. As much as she wants to move forward, Ailish is caught in a spiral with her ghosts. In order to escape them, she must resolve her past. Revisit it. Construct again, from memory, the family and friends who shaped her, the boy she could not forget, the changing Ireland which provided the backdrop for their lives. Under the guidance of her therapist, Ailish begins the process of examining her previous selves: anxious child, traumatized teenager, adult woman riven with a never-to-be-shared secret. From these uniquely broken shards, can she assemble a present self, a whole self, one she can live with?

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