'Powerful and searing' Sunday Times
'Eerie, tender and wonderful' Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure
'I was frightened of him in a way – of his grief, his loneliness – for he looked like the loneliest person on earth just then . . . the type of boy who wondered about things, as I did, who broke his heart wondering about things . . .'
In 1990s-small-town Ireland, amid the sweaty school discos and first fumblings of adolescence, fifteen-year-old Lani Devine falls in love with Leon Brady, whose mother is buried in the cemetery next to Lani's house.
Lani is haunted by the stories of thirty-five orphaned girls, buried in an unmarked grave near Leon's mother. As the love story unfolds, and then unravels, it becomes clear that Leon too is haunted – by a brutal family tragedy that has left scars much more than skin-deep.
He Is Mine and I Have No Other is a captivating, eerie and atmospheric novel about the obsessive power of first love, about the claustrophobia a tight-knit family and community can cause, and about buried secrets and the havoc they wreak.
Genre: Literary Fiction
'Eerie, tender and wonderful' Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure
'I was frightened of him in a way – of his grief, his loneliness – for he looked like the loneliest person on earth just then . . . the type of boy who wondered about things, as I did, who broke his heart wondering about things . . .'
In 1990s-small-town Ireland, amid the sweaty school discos and first fumblings of adolescence, fifteen-year-old Lani Devine falls in love with Leon Brady, whose mother is buried in the cemetery next to Lani's house.
Lani is haunted by the stories of thirty-five orphaned girls, buried in an unmarked grave near Leon's mother. As the love story unfolds, and then unravels, it becomes clear that Leon too is haunted – by a brutal family tragedy that has left scars much more than skin-deep.
He Is Mine and I Have No Other is a captivating, eerie and atmospheric novel about the obsessive power of first love, about the claustrophobia a tight-knit family and community can cause, and about buried secrets and the havoc they wreak.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"I devoured He Is Mine and I Have No Other in a day, immediately caught up in O'Connor's vividly realised world. The intensity of relationships and shifting loyalties is brilliantly captured as the teenage protagonist, Lani Devine, wrestles with family life, friendship and first love. O'Connor perfectly evokes the passion, uncertainties and awkward misunderstandings of teen love. He Is Mine and I Have No Other is a great achievement and my only complaint is that I wanted more!" - Ever Dundas
"A haunting novel that cuts right into the delicate and dangerous world of the adolescent. Sometimes frightening, often funny, but never a word less than a true work of art." - Christine Dwyer Hickey
"God, this book is brilliant. It sends you, helter-skelter, back to life as a fifteen-year-old and all the intensity of that age. A love story set against an undercurrent of untold tragedy. Vivid and utterly compelling, this book had me torn between racing on and stopping to marvel at beautifully crafted lines." - Jess Kidd
"Evocative of Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding and Maura Laverty's glorious, long out of print, Never No More, Rebecca O'Connor's debut novel is vivid, authentic and compelling and may be the truest depiction of Irish rural girlhood since Edna O'Brien's Girl With Green Eyes. For that it is, and a lot more besides. What a treat it is to be introduced to such a genuine, compassionately humorous and profoundly tender voice." - Patrick McCabe
"He Is Mine And I Have No Other is a book of secrets, and it burns with the sadness and starkness particular to lives forced into secrecy and silence. And yet there is, too, in this story a lucid and beautiful happiness, fragile though it may be; the happiness of being young, and in love, and of finding that love returned. Rebecca O'Connor captures vividly the small triumphs and catastrophes of being a teenage girl in rural Ireland, but in the further darkness to which she reaches is a truth for all generations." - Belinda McKeon
"My heart broke a little bit for Lani and Leon by the end. He Is Mine and I Have No Other vividly calls up the atmosphere of small-town life, I could positively feel the damp mistiness of it on my skin. Eerie, tender and wonderful." - Sophie Mackintosh
"I adored He is Mine and I Have No Other . . . Amazing, heartbreaking, brilliantly done." - Donal Ryan
"A haunting novel that cuts right into the delicate and dangerous world of the adolescent. Sometimes frightening, often funny, but never a word less than a true work of art." - Christine Dwyer Hickey
"God, this book is brilliant. It sends you, helter-skelter, back to life as a fifteen-year-old and all the intensity of that age. A love story set against an undercurrent of untold tragedy. Vivid and utterly compelling, this book had me torn between racing on and stopping to marvel at beautifully crafted lines." - Jess Kidd
"Evocative of Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding and Maura Laverty's glorious, long out of print, Never No More, Rebecca O'Connor's debut novel is vivid, authentic and compelling and may be the truest depiction of Irish rural girlhood since Edna O'Brien's Girl With Green Eyes. For that it is, and a lot more besides. What a treat it is to be introduced to such a genuine, compassionately humorous and profoundly tender voice." - Patrick McCabe
"He Is Mine And I Have No Other is a book of secrets, and it burns with the sadness and starkness particular to lives forced into secrecy and silence. And yet there is, too, in this story a lucid and beautiful happiness, fragile though it may be; the happiness of being young, and in love, and of finding that love returned. Rebecca O'Connor captures vividly the small triumphs and catastrophes of being a teenage girl in rural Ireland, but in the further darkness to which she reaches is a truth for all generations." - Belinda McKeon
"My heart broke a little bit for Lani and Leon by the end. He Is Mine and I Have No Other vividly calls up the atmosphere of small-town life, I could positively feel the damp mistiness of it on my skin. Eerie, tender and wonderful." - Sophie Mackintosh
"I adored He is Mine and I Have No Other . . . Amazing, heartbreaking, brilliantly done." - Donal Ryan
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