The glorious heresies, Lisa McInerney

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Summary: He was definitely dead, whoever he was. He wore a once-black jumper and a pair of shiny tracksuit bottoms. The back of his head was cracked and his hair matted, but it had been foxy before that. A tall man, a skinny rake, another string of piss, now departed. She hadn't gotten a look at his face before she flaked him with the Holy Stone and she couldn't bring herself to turn him over. One messy murder affects the lives of five misfits who exist on the fringes of Ireland's post-crash society. Ryan is a fifteen-year-old drug dealer desperate not to turn out like his alcoholic father Tony, whose obsession with his unhinged next-door neighbour threatens to ruin him and his family. Georgie is a prostitute whose willingness to feign a religious conversion has dangerous repercussions, while Maureen, the accidental murderer, has returned to Cork after forty years in exile to discover that Jimmy, the son she was forced to give up years before, has grown into the most fearsome gangster in the city. In seeking atonement for the murder and a multitude of other perceived sins, Maureen threatens to destroy everything her son has worked so hard for, while her actions risk bringing the intertwined lives of the Irish underworld into the spotlight... Biting, moving and darkly funny,' The glorious heresies' explores salvation, shame and the legacy of Ireland's twentieth-century attitudes to sex and family

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Summary: He was definitely dead, whoever he was. He wore a once-black jumper and a pair of shiny tracksuit bottoms. The back of his head was cracked and his hair matted, but it had been foxy before that. A tall man, a skinny rake, another string of piss, now departed. She hadn't gotten a look at his face before she flaked him with the Holy Stone and she couldn't bring herself to turn him over. One messy murder affects the lives of five misfits who exist on the fringes of Ireland's post-crash society. Ryan is a fifteen-year-old drug dealer desperate not to turn out like his alcoholic father Tony, whose obsession with his unhinged next-door neighbour threatens to ruin him and his family. Georgie is a prostitute whose willingness to feign a religious conversion has dangerous repercussions, while Maureen, the accidental murderer, has returned to Cork after forty years in exile to discover that Jimmy, the son she was forced to give up years before, has grown into the most fearsome gangster in the city. In seeking atonement for the murder and a multitude of other perceived sins, Maureen threatens to destroy everything her son has worked so hard for, while her actions risk bringing the intertwined lives of the Irish underworld into the spotlight... Biting, moving and darkly funny,' The glorious heresies' explores salvation, shame and the legacy of Ireland's twentieth-century attitudes to sex and family

Summary: This darkly humorous, gritty debut has a lot in common with novels by Irvine Welsh -- foul language, colorful slang, and seedy characters, to start. Though it ostensibly follows the consequences of Maureen Phelan's clubbing of an intruder using a holy relic (she asks her gangster son to conceal the (accidental) death that results), it also addresses the violence, crime, and despair of an Ireland whose economic hopes have been dashed. Five years pass within these pages, as characters young and old alike are forced into bad choices. Give it a go if you're up for something dark, literary, and profane. -- Description by Shauna Griffin