Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way

Claire O’Connor’s life has been on hold since she broke up with Tom Morton and moved from cosmopolitan London back home to the rugged west of Ireland to care for her dying father. Now, a couple of years later, Claire learns that Tom has moved nearby for work. She must decide if he has come for her or for himself, and unravel what went wrong in their past.

Living in her childhood home brings its own challenges. While she tries to maintain a normal life – obsessing over the internet and trad wives, going to work, and minding her own business – Tom’s return stirs up old memories and the stories trapped within the walls of the old house that looms nearby.

As the violence of the past collides with the mundane reality of Claire’s everyday life, she must confront whether she can escape her history or if she is destined to be immobilized by it forever.

Elaine Feeney is an acclaimed novelist and poet from the west of Ireland. Her debut novel, As You Were, was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Irish Novel of the Year Award, and won the Kate O’Brien Award, the McKitterick Prize and the Dalkey Festival Emerging Writer Award. How to Build a Boat was also shortlisted for Irish