The Amendments - by Niamh Mulvey

About the Book

A sweeping family saga that tells the story of three Irish women and their struggles to find love, meaning and freedom against a backdrop of enormous social and cultural change as Ireland marks time with a series of abortion referendums.

Book Synopsis

'Engrossing and moving . . . gives voice to so much that's unspoken about Ireland' - Emma Donoghue
'Wonderfully compelling . . . haunting' - Joseph O'Connor

Delving into the lives of three generations of women, The Amendments is an extraordinary novel about love and freedom, belonging and rebellion - and about how our past is a vital presence which sits alongside us.

Nell and her partner Adrienne are about to have a baby. For Adrienne, it's the start of a new life. For Nell, it's the reason the two of them are sitting in a therapist's office. Because she can't go into this without dealing with the truth: that she has been a mother before, and now she can hardly bring herself to speak to her own mother, let alone return home to Ireland.

Nell is running out of places to hide from her past.

But to Ireland and the past is where she must go, and that is where The Amendments takes us: to the heat of Nell's teenage years in the early 2000s, as Ireland was unpicking itself from its faith and embracing the hedonism of the Celtic Tiger. To 1983, when Nell's mother Dolores was grappling with the tensions of the women's rights movement. And then to the farms and suburbs and towns that made and unmade the lives at the centre of this story, bound together by the terrible secret that Nell still cannot face.

About the Author

Niamh Mulvey is the author of the short story collection, Hearts and Bones, which was shortlisted for the John McGahern Award. Her short fiction has been published in The Stinging Fly, Banshee, Southword and The Irish Times and has been shortlisted for the Seán O'Faoláin Prize. She lives in Kilkenny, Ireland. The Amendments is her first novel.