Essentially, this is a colourful tale of sex, drugs, alcohol, crime and religion, and delivered with such panache with its 'in your face' earthy and gritty style. You cannot have a book set in Ireland without reference to the Catholic Church, there is Georgia, a prostitute who finds religion while McInerney adroitly reveals the hypocrisies of the church. The murder sets off a series of consequences that bring mayhem and danger to a number of characters. The mess created by the dead body needs cleaning up, for which Jimmy plans to hire Tony to help him. Maureen Phelan is the mother of Jimmy, the king of the criminal underbelly of Cork, and finds herself committing the unintended murder of an unfortunate intruder. There is the unspeakable horror that is the larger than life neighbour. 15 year old drug dealer Ryan Cusack has no intention of being anything like his violent and alcoholic dad, Tony, and he is mad for Karine, and wonder of wonders, she likes him. īiting, moving and darkly funny, The Glorious Heresies explores salvation, shame and the legacy of Ireland's twentieth-century attitudes to sex and family.Ī gloriously moving, blackly comic, filthy and vibrant story from the award winning Lisa McInerney set in the rough port city of Cork in Ireland. In seeking atonement for the murder and a multitude of other perceived sins, Maureen threatens to destroy everything her son has worked so hard for, while her actions risk bringing the intertwined lives of the Irish underworld into the spotlight. Georgie is a prostitute whose willingness to feign a religious conversion has dangerous repercussions, while Maureen, the accidental murderer, has returned to Cork after forty years in exile to discover that Jimmy, the son she was forced to give up years before, has grown into the most fearsome gangster in the city. Ryan is a fifteen-year-old drug dealer desperate not to turn out like his alcoholic father Tony, whose obsession with his unhinged next-door neighbour threatens to ruin him and his family. One messy murder affects the lives of five misfits who exist on the fringes of Ireland's post-crash society.

The glorious heresies review