End of the World is a Cul de Sac (Bloomsbury Publishing)

'A dazzling, heartbreaking debut collection' Guardian'Kennedy's voice, and her unforgiving gaze, are electric' Sunday Times'These stories sing, haunt and inspire laughter... One of the best collections I've read in years' Sinead GleesonA SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEARThe secrets people kept, the lies they told. In these visceral, stunningly crafted stories, people are effortlessly cruel to one another, and the natural world is a primitive salve.Here, women are domestically trapped aby predatorial men, Ireland's folklore and politics loom large, and poverty - material, emotional, sexual - seeps through every crack. A wife is abandoned aby her new husband in a ghost estate, with blood on her hands; a young woman is tormented aby visions of the man murdered aby her brother during the Troubles; a pregnant mother fears the worst as her husband grows illegal cannabis with the help of a vulnerable teenage girl; a woman struggles to forgive herself after an abortion threatens to destroy her marriage. Announcing a major new voice in literary fiction for the twenty-first century, these sharp shocks of stories offer flashes of beauty, and even humour, amidst the harshest of truths.