Top

We have updated our Privacy Policy Please take a moment to review it. By continuing to use this site, you agree to the terms of our updated Privacy Policy.

Rockadoon Shore

On sale

8th March 2018

Price: £9.99

Select a format

Selected: Paperback / ISBN-13: 9781473634107

Disclosure: If you buy products using the retailer buttons above, we may earn a commission from the retailers you visit.

The author of The Body Audit, shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award 2021

Rockadoon Shore is terrific’ Roddy Doyle

‘One of the most exciting Irish storytellers to have emerged in years’ Gavin Corbett

Cath is worried about her friends. DanDan is struggling with the death of his ex, Lucy is drinking way too much and Steph has become closed off. A weekend away is just what they need so they travel out to Rockadoon Lodge, to the wilds in the west of Ireland.

But the weekend doesn’t go to plan. JJ is more concerned with getting high than spending time with them, while Merc is humiliated and seeks revenge. And with long-ignored tensions now out in the open, their elderly neighbour Malachy arrives on their doorstep with a gun in his hands . . .

Honest, moving and human, Rockadoon Shore is a novel about friendship and youth, about missed opportunities and lost love, and about the realities of growing up and growing old in modern-day Ireland. Highly energetic and tensely humorous, it heralds a new and exciting voice in contemporary Irish fiction.

What's Inside

Read More Read Less

Reviews

Irish Sunday Independent
Rockadoon Shore, a saga about young people traversing the early years of adulthood and the decisions we make in life, is very much built to fit into the Irish literary-fiction domain where Donal Ryan and Lisa McInerney dwell
Sunday Business Post
Gleeson has energy and enthusiasm; he is a talent to watch
Gavin Corbett
Fierce, funny, vivid, and compelling from the first line. Rory Gleeson is one of the most exciting Irish storytellers to have emerged in years
Sunday Express
Sharply funny
Times Literary Supplement
Gleeson is in fact remarkable not for his voice but for his voices: among other things, Rockadoon Shore is an accomplished act of ventriloquism. Gleeson giving the narrative reins to each of his characters in turn and thus extending his and our sympathy towards them all
Daily Mail
Gleeson is particularly good at skewering the unspoken tensions between his characters as the weekend falls apart spectacularly . . . This is an uncomfortable read that's like being in a slow, but mesmerising, train crash
Irish Independent
Boisterous and energetic
Roddy Doyle
Rockadoon Shore is terrific. It's full of surprises and sharp writing, great belts of dialogue, and a gang of characters who manage to be likeable and unlikeable, clever and thick, loud and vulnerable, entertaining and very, very real
Guardian
Fresh in its unpredictability . . . gutsy and ambitious
Mail on Sunday
Crackling with wit and fine writing . . . An exuberant dispatch from the front line of youthful narcissism and despair
Irish Times
Think early Big Brother meets Friends, with a sprinkling of fish-out-of-water countryside farce à la Withnail & I . . . it hints at a keen and socially attentive writerly sensibility, which will hopefully be more expansively showcased in due course
Sunday Times
Rory Gleeson's debut novel reads like A Midsummer Night's Dream by way of Trainspotting, all moonlight and MDMA . . . Savage comedy and inevitable tragedy are unflinchingly and dauntlessly intermingled in this impressive debut, which has a flawless sense of place
Liz Nugent
Rory Gleeson brilliantly nails the self-obsession of the young and entitled in this sharply observed tale of sex, drugs and Rockadoon Shore. A brand new and welcome voice speaking for the disenchanted and disaffected