Kevin Maher - The Fields - Little, Brown Book Group
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  • Paperback £12.99
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    • ISBN:9781408704059
    • Publication date:28 Feb 2013
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    • ISBN:9781405515627
    • Publication date:28 Feb 2013

The Fields

By Kevin Maher

  • Hardback
  • £12.99

The launch of a major new literary voice in Irish/British fiction: set in 1980s Dublin and London, The Fields tells the vividly evocative story of Jim Finnegan's unfairly interrupted adolescence and is one of the Waterstones 11 for 2013, a list of the chain's best fiction debuts.

I slept right through to the next day. Missed the funeral and everything. Mam said it was just as well. Would've been too upsetting. I think of him now, though. Right at this moment. Here in this kitchen. And I wonder if it could've been different.

Dublin, 1984: Ireland is a divided country, the Parish Priest remains a figure of immense authority and Jim Finnegan is thirteen years old, the youngest in a family of five sisters. Life in Jim's world consists of dealing with the helter-skelter intensity of his rumbustious family, taking breakneck bike rides with his best friend, and quietly coveting the local girls from afar. But after a drunken yet delicate rendition of 'The Fields of Athenry' at the Donohues' raucous annual party, Jim captures both the attention of the beautiful Saidhbh Donohue and the unwanted desires of the devious and dangerous Father Luke O'Culigeen.

Bounced between his growing love for Saidhbh and his need to avoid the dreaded O'Culigeen, Jim's life starts to unravel. He and Saidhbh take a ferry for a clandestine trip to London that has dark and difficult repercussions, forcing Jim to look for the solution to all his problems in some very unusual places.

The Fields is an unforgettable story of an extraordinary character: Jim's voice leaps off the page and straight into the reader's heart, as he grapples with his unfairly interrupted adolescence. Lyrical, funny, profoundly original and endlessly inventive, it is a brilliant debut from a remarkable new voice.

  • Other details

  • ISBN: 9781408704165
  • Publication date: 28 Feb 2013
  • Page count: 400
Biographical Notes

Kevin Maher was born and brought up in Dublin, moving to London in 1994 to begin a career in journalism. He wrote for the Guardian, the Observer and Time Out and was film editor of the Face until 2002, before joining The Times where for the last eight years he has been a feature writer, critic and columnist.

It's not often, reading a first novel, that you can settle back with a happy sigh, confident that you're in safe hands. The narrator of Kevin Maher's debut, 13-year-old Jim Finnegan, hits his comic stride straight away, and doesn't let up for a minute . . . With pin-sharp period detail and a frenetic comic energy, this Irish debut is a laugh-out-loud read . . .Thrust into extremity, Jim retains that childlike combination of innocence and enthusiasm that can make even daily existence seem larger-than-life: The Fields glows larger still. Fresh, beguiling and laugh-out-loud funny on every page, this must be the most enjoyable Irish novel since Skippy Dies — Guardian - Justine Jordan
Heartbreaking and hilarious in equal measures . . . the relationship with the most profound effect on him - with his father - is the least dramatic but it's so quietly devastating it had me in tears . . . I couldn't put it down. And for someone like me - a slow reader with a short commute - that's really saying something — Stylist magazine
Rich in period detail, Kevin Maher's debut novel captures the spirit of the changing times in Ireland, and convincingly conveys all the exuberance, uncertainty and angst of being a teenage boy; it's funny and heart-warming. Maher is an engaging writer and this is a hugely enjoyable - and promising - debut — Daily Mail
Plunging you headlong into 80s Ireland, Kevin Maher's debut novel, The Fields is crazy mad, lyrical and unforgettable . . . [a] funny, moving, compelling and hugely original coming of age story . . . Don't miss this brilliant debut from a remarkable new voice — Red magazine
entertaining, often hilarious, touching and at times deeply troubling . . . There are some exquisite moments of comedy that anyone with a whiff of Irish heritage will immediately recognise . . . Jim's strength, humour and vibrancy flood the novel with an energy and optimism that will leave you warm inside. The Fields is a story about the messiness of family life, yes, but it is also, ultimately, a beautiful tribute to families everywhere that soldier on no matter what life throws at them — Sunday Express
Were Roddy Doyle to co-author a novel with Edward St. Aubyn, the results might look a lot like Kevin Maher's gloriously ribald debut, The Fields. Taking the former's mastery of Irish demotic and the latter's peculiar talent for unearthing gallows humour in the most upsetting of personal tragedies, Maher's picaresque tale certainly packs a punch . . . Maher's fearless and heartwarming prose is simply too lovely to resist — Metro
Black comedy and infinite narrative energy . . . Maher's writing is immediate, highly descriptive and unflinching . . . reminiscent of some of Patrick McCabe's work. The Fields is a clever novel and operates on many levels. Highly accessible, it wears its ideas lightly . . . Jim . . . begins to believe that he might be a healer himself. The belief leads to a beautiful and extraordinary conclusion. Jim's healing - or redemption - doesn't seem inauthentic; and nor does it negate what he has suffered because, from the outset, Maher has made space for the seemingly impossible' — Sunday Business Post, Ireland
When my friend said this was the best book he's ever read I had pretty high expectations and it didn't disappoint . . . utterly captivating. If you're a fan of Chris O'Dowd's Moone Boy then this is definitely for you — U magazine, Ireland
a powerful comic debut — Sunday Times
magic and weirdly moving — The Times
very funny, infected with the rueful mirth of memory. Maher has built the serious underlying novel from the comedy of childhood in Ireland — Irish Examiner
2013 Prize for Debut Fiction

The Fields Longlisted for Desmond Elliott

Little, Brown are delighted to announce that The Fields by Kevin Maher has been longlisted for the 2013 Desmond Elliot prize.

by Kevin Maher

The Fields

The launch of a major new literary voice in Irish/British fiction: set in 1980s Dublin and London, The Fields tells the vividly evocative story of Jim Finnegan's unfairly interrupted adolescence and is one of the Waterstones 11 for 2013, a list of the chain's best fiction debuts.

Orbit

Glasshouse

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The Hijack

Duncan Falconer

Two hundred miles south of the Devon coastline, Palestinian freedom fighter Abed Abu Omar and twenty men prepare for their most daring mission yet - the hijack of a supertanker, a five-storey superstructure laden with oil. Meanwhile, in an Elizabethan country house, SBS operative Stratton has been seconded to bodyguard work and is bored by the lack of challenge. Not for long.With the helter-skelter pace that defined Duncan Falconer's brilliant debut THE HOSTAGE, Stratton has been whisked away by helicopter to assist in a daring rescue. THE HIJACK ranges from London to the Gaza Strip, from Riga in Latvia to Jerusalem.With a rich cast of characters from Russian secret service operatives to Al Qaeda terrorists and the Israeli military, the authentic detail and heartstopping narrative will propel Duncan Falconer to the highest class of adventure writers.

Piatkus

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Michael J. Maher
19 Mar
Mr. B's Emporium of Reading Delights, Bath

Kevin Maher event

7pm

Kevin Maher bookshop event in Bath

17 Aug
Edinburgh International Book Festival

Kevin Maher event

7pm

Kevin Maher event at Edinburgh Festival

Kevin Maher talks about The Fields

Trying to read his own book without laughing

Kevin Maher talks about Waterstones 11 title

The Fields

Somaly Mam

Somaly Mam lives near Phnom Penh with her three children.

Virago

The Road Of Lost Innocence

Somaly Mam
Virago

The House Of Mirth

Edith Wharton
Grand Central Publishing

To Desire A Devil

Elizabeth Hoyt

Reynaud St. Aubyn has spent the last seven years in hellish captivity. Now half mad with fever he bursts into his ancestral home and demands his due. Can this wild-looking man truly be the last earl's heir, thought murdered by Indians years ago?Beatrice Corning, the niece of the present earl, is a proper English miss. But she has a secret: No real man has ever excited her more than the handsome youth in the portrait in her uncle's home. Suddenly, that very man is here, in the flesh-and luring her into his bedOnly Beatrice can see past Reynaud's savagery to the noble man inside. For his part, Reynaud is drawn to this lovely lady, even as he is suspicious of her loyalty to her uncle. But can Beatrice's love tame a man who will stop at nothing to regain his title-even if it means sacrificing her innocence?

Orbit

Soulless: The Manga Vol. 1

Gail Carriger
Orbit

Soulless

Gail Carriger

Alexia Tarabotti is labouring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. Second, she's a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette. Where to go from there? From bad to worse apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire - and then the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate. With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia responsible. Can she figure out what is actually happening to London's high society? Or will her soulless ability to negate supernatural powers prove useful or just plain embarrassing? Finally, who is the real enemy, and do they have treacle tart? SOULLESS is a comedy of manners set in Victorian London: full of werewolves, vampires, dirigibles, and tea-drinking.***Also available as a manga adaptation***

Forever

Duchess Of Sin

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Piatkus

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Alexander Roman wants nothing to do with the controlling rulers of his vampire breed, but as a new threat to the pureblood vampires emerges, Alexander's ties to the past are forced upon him, and without warning, he finds himself disoriented, terrified and near death at the door of a stranger.Dr Sara Donohue is dedicated to removing the traumatic memories of her patients - like those of the stranger at her front door. But what he tells her of his past is too astonishing to be anything more than the delusion of a madman. Then, as their worlds collide, Sara and Alexander are bound as one becomes hunter and the other prey. And Sara's only chance of survival is to surrender to the final - and most unimaginable - desire of her life.

Virago

The Woman Who Gave Birth To Rabbits

Emma Donoghue

The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits is a book of fictions, but they are also true. Over the last ten years, I have often stumbled over a scrap of history so fascinating that I had to stop whatever I was doing and write a story about it. My sources are the flotsam and jetsam of the last seven hundred years of British and Irish life: surgical case-notes; trial records; a plague ballad; theological pamphlets; a painting of two girls in a garden; an articulated skeleton. Some of the ghosts in this collection have famous names; others were written off as cripples, children, half-breeds, freaks and nobodies. The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits is named for Mary Toft, who in 1726 managed to convince half England that she had done just that.So this book is what I have to show for ten years of sporadic grave-robbing, ferreting out forgotten puzzles and peculiar incidents, asking 'What really happened?', but also, 'What if?

Piatkus

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New digital literary imprint from Little, Brown

Announcing Blackfriars

In June 2013, Little, Brown Book Group will launch the first digital literary imprint from a major UK publisher. Blackfriars has been created with the aim of discovering and nurturing new talent (or talent that has been away for a while) by Clare Smith of L,B/Abacus and Ursula Doyle of Virago.