Even during wartime, civilian life continues. Kennedy compels her readers to give the same heft to Cushla’s desires and emotions as to her political predicament. Smelly laundry and tidy nails may not sound like the stuff of war stories, or, depending on your biases, of serious fiction. Kennedy offers readers an honest portrait of pleasure that can be difficult to find outside books explicitly marketed as romance novels. Such satisfying sex between a straight man and woman is rare in literary fiction. Their steamy, frank sex scenes illustrate the joys of being seen both physically and emotionally.

It’s more fun still when she begins actively seeking facts about Michael, animated by desire that all but radiates off the page. Such social details are as enjoyable to read as they clearly are for Cushla to gather. Kennedy has a keen eye for human detail, and is adept at creating characters through the little observations one might pass around like rumors. written in a style that feels intimate and gossipy. One of the great pleasures of Trespasses is Kennedy’s ability to twine social dynamics together so tightly that they grow impossible to tease apart. Class and sectarian tensions-some ambient, some verging on explicit-ripple through every description and bit of dialogue in the scene. In telling a fully realized romance that is also a fully realized story of the Troubles, she demonstrates how artificial it is for fiction to divide love and war. By attending to romance and courtship, and by writing about beatings and bombings alongside gossip and domestic detail, Kennedy refuses to shrink or ignore any part of her characters’ lives. Nor does Kennedy avert her eyes from the Troubles, the era during which her novel is set. Kennedy doesn’t shy away from either fun or femininity.

Louise kennedy trespasses review