Breakdown by Cathy Sweeney

From the Irish Tatler's Woman of the Year for Literature and one of the AN Post Irish Book Awards's Best New Irish Writers comes a novel about one woman's decision to leave everything behind.

Mothers are not supposed to go on road trips . . .

But one winter morning in Dublin, an ordinary woman wakes up in her ordinary home, her husband next to her in bed, her teenage children sleeping nearby. And - without thinking much about it - walks out the front door and never comes back.

So begins a journey which will take her into service stations and shopping centres, hotel bars and hairdressers - and the beds of strange men.

Until finally, forty-eight hours later, alone in a cottage in Wales, the woman faces up to what she has been ignoring inside herself, her family, modern society: signs of breakdown.

A masterful account of one woman's dramatic rebellion against society's demands. Compelling, exquisitely written and painfully perceptive - Daily Express

A gripping character study . . . Sweeney shines a light on the grimy underbelly of family life in scenes so searing you almost wince to read them - Daily Mail

Breakdown is set to be one of the most talked-about books of 2024. The novel follows as [a woman] breaks societal rules and taboos in a quest for freedom, while contemplating a woman's lot in the Ireland of the 2020's - Irish Sunday Times