The Amusements by Aingeala Flannery
Synopsis
In the resort town of Tramore, County Waterford, visitors arrive in waves with the tourist season, reliving the best days of their childhoods at the seaside amusements.
Local teenager Helen Grant is indifferent to the charm of her surroundings; infatuated with her glamorous classmate Stella Swaine, she yearns to escape with her to art college, and from there, the world. But leaving Tramore is easier said than done. With an alcoholic father and an unsympathetic mother, Helen's family life may shatter her dream, just when it seems to be within reach . . .
Following the Grant and Swaine families and their neighbours over three decades, The Amusements is an unforgettable story about roads taken and not taken. It is a brilliantly observed portrait of life in a small town.
Reviews
'Brilliant . . . her sentences crackle with life, energy and devastating insight into the human condition. She writes with a rare combination of compassion and black humour. Her characters live on in my mind like people I have always known' Lia Mills
'Effortless, perceptive, and hugely entertaining - I loved it' Donal Ryan
'Flannery has a glinting eye . . . the writing, so true to small-town life, is both shrewd and enlarging . . . her flawed, hopeful characters live and grow on the page' Anne Enright
'A cracker of a book' Kathleen McMahon
'A joy to read' Louise Nealon
About the Author
Aingeala Flannery is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster. She has completed an MFA in Creative Writing at University College Dublin. Her short story 'Visiting Hours' was the winner of the 2019 Harper's Bazaar Short Story Competition. In 2020 and 2021, she was awarded a Literature Bursary by the Arts Council of Ireland. Her work has appeared in The Bath Anthology and has been broadcast on RTÉ Radio One as part of the Francis MacManus Short Story Competition. She lives in Dublin. The Amusements is her first book.