2024 Betty Trask Prize (nominee)
A “truly extraordinary” (Bassey Ikpi) debut novel of modern Belfast that sings a tender hymn to messy love, quiet grief, and the hangovers in between.
Back home after abruptly leaving graduate school in London, Erin numbly teeters through the shock of losing her best friend to an accident she doesn’t want to talk about—especially with her mother. But it’s easy to slip into the rhythms of Belfast, the lazy city; she takes an au pair job and bookends her days with early morning runs along the Lagan and hazy afters at a bar her old friend tends. In quick succession, she meets an American man who is looking to get lost, and falls back in with the local boy who both comforts and confounds her. But it is her unlikely, secretive relationship with faith that offers a different kind of sanctuary. Wandering into empty churches, gazing with mascara-smudged eyes at the stained-glass windows, Erin finally, gingerly, confronts herself.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Back home after abruptly leaving graduate school in London, Erin numbly teeters through the shock of losing her best friend to an accident she doesn’t want to talk about—especially with her mother. But it’s easy to slip into the rhythms of Belfast, the lazy city; she takes an au pair job and bookends her days with early morning runs along the Lagan and hazy afters at a bar her old friend tends. In quick succession, she meets an American man who is looking to get lost, and falls back in with the local boy who both comforts and confounds her. But it is her unlikely, secretive relationship with faith that offers a different kind of sanctuary. Wandering into empty churches, gazing with mascara-smudged eyes at the stained-glass windows, Erin finally, gingerly, confronts herself.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"In the wry and compassionate Lazy City, Rachel Connolly deftly captures both the intoxicating chaos and listlessness of young adulthood, when life seems both full of possibility and impossibly elusive." - Colin Barrett
"Frank, attentive, free of artifice or emotional contrivances, Rachel Connolly brings something new to any subject she shines her singular intelligence on." - Nicole Flattery
"Crisp, clear-eyed and witty writing. . . . Rachel Connolly's characters and their flawed, human attempts at redemption will stay with me for a long time." - Monica Heisey
"Frank, attentive, free of artifice or emotional contrivances, Rachel Connolly brings something new to any subject she shines her singular intelligence on." - Nicole Flattery
"Crisp, clear-eyed and witty writing. . . . Rachel Connolly's characters and their flawed, human attempts at redemption will stay with me for a long time." - Monica Heisey
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