We Were Young by Niamh Campbell
Synopsis
Cormac is a photographer. Approaching forty and still single, he suddenly finds himself 'the leftover man'. Through talent and charm, he has escaped small town life and a haunted family.
But now his peers are all getting divorced, dying, or buying trampolines in the suburbs. Cormac is dating former students, staying out all night and receiving boilerplate rejection emails for his work, propped up by a constellation of the women and ex-lovers in his life.
In the last weeks of the year, Cormac meets Caroline, an ambitious young dancer, and embarks on a miniature odyssey of intimacy. Simultaneously, he must take responsibility for his married brother, whose mid-life crisis forces them both to reckon with a death in the family that hangs over those left behind.
Set in Dublin, a city built on burial pits, We Were Young is a dazzlingly clever, deeply enjoyable novel from a Sunday Times Short Story Award-Winning author.
Reviews
'I love this woman's writing. Golden sentences' Diana Evans
'She has already been compared with writers such as Eimear McBride, Ali Smith and Claire Louise Bennett, and indeed Niamh Campbell does add a distinctive new voice to Irish literature... Witty, fiery, wistful and even shocking, with engrossing heady prose, Campbell's style is unique' Irish Independent
'In 30 years from now will some literary critic be asking what is meant by "Campbellesque"? That would not surprise me in the slightest' Irish Times
'A stunning book that cracked me open. Campbell's sentences are nothing short of magnificent' Sue Rainsford
About the Author
Niamh Campbell was born in 1988 and grew up in Dublin. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in The Dublin Review, 3:AM, Banshee, gorse, Five Dials, and Tangerine. She was awarded a Next Generation literary bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland, and annual literary bursaries in 2018 and 2019. Her monograph Sacred Weather is published by Cork University Press, and her debut novel This Happy is forthcoming from Weidenfeld and Nicolson in June 2020.