We are delighted to announce the publication this month of Rituals, a new novel by Danielle McLaughlin. The novel is due for publication on April 23rd.
You can now pre-order copies of the book. Pre-ordered copies will be sent out in the week of Monday April 13th.
Joan, a public servant in her fifties, is in the habit of living alone. Or rather, she’s in the habit of living with the many rituals and routines—some ordinary, some less so—that allow her to navigate her days.
It’s a system that works very well for Joan… until it doesn’t. An unexpected career break prompts her to take in a lodger, a young man studying English Literature at the university. Together they must learn to negotiate everything from a shared bathroom to the hazards of global warming.
Set in Cork city, Rituals takes us inside an obsessive mind and invites us to reflect upon the power and beauty contained within our daily lives, but also the dark grip of compulsion. By turns tender, funny and poignant, it celebrates the bravery involved in opening our hearts to change and to chance.
Advance praise for Rituals includes this endorsement from the novelist and short-story writer Tessa Hadley:
“I loved Rituals. It's funny and generous and warm. The writing, from sentence to sentence, is just so good. Very few books are this joyous. It made me think a lot of Anne Tyler.”
Danielle McLaughlin’s short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Stinging Fly, The Irish Times and have been broadcast on RTE Radio 1 and BBC Radio 4. She is the author of the short-story collection, Dinosaurs On Other Planets (2015) and a novel, The Art of Falling (2021). She lives in Cork and has been the recipient of numerous awards, among them a Markievicz Award from the Arts Council, a Windham-Campbell Prize, and the Sunday Times Short Story Prize.
