Overview

Helen’s expectations were far from starry-eyed, but married life with Frank in the late 1960s seemed bewilderingly joyless; from the honeymoon in a seedy Paddington hotel complete with dirty linen and a nosy landlady, her new husband drinking until all hours with a shady ‘friend’, their first home in his parents’ Irish pub, in a provincial backwater town. Frank’s father was his own best customer, his mother a shrill and censorious presence in the background, with the local priest as her only friend. Would she allow a sense of hopefulness to creep upon her when she finds out that a baby is on the way? The Sinners’ Bell is Kevin Casey’s first novel, published in 1968 by Faber & Faber. He reveals a striking capacity to convey with sympathy and unsentimental understanding the feelings of the inarticulate, and his portrayal of Helen’s struggle to come to terms with her own unhappiness is profoundly moving. Atmospheric and finely written, this exposé of a shotgun wedding and subsequent marriage is a jewel of narration, and a reissue that is long overdue.

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9781843516705

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Reviews

The Sinners' Bell isn't a cheery read. But it's bold and atmospheric, an unflinching examination of a way of life long since over. -- Kim Forrester * Reading Matters * Kevin Casey's first novel, originally published in 1968 by Faber & Faber, and republished now by the Lilliput Press, is terrifically good. Its depiction of what small-town Ireland used to be like, and its unflinching portrayal of the shuttered and pinched misery in which so many ordinary people existed rather than lived, is a terrifying reminder of a land where suspicion, jealousy, fear, puritanism and ignorance ruled. -- Rosita Sweetman * The Irish Times *

Author Information

Kevin Casey, writer and critic, was born in Kells, Co. Meath in 1940. He went to Blackrock College, Dublin, and was once the Abbey Theatre’s youngest playwright. He is married to the poet Eavan Boland. He is also the author of The Sinners’ Bell (1968), A Sense of Survival (1974), Dreams of Revenge (1977) and A State of Mind (2009).

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