An Táin Book Club returns to Dundalk's Roe River Books

An Táin Arts Centre’s book club returns to Roe River Books on Thursday, 26th March at 8pm, for a discussion of this month’s selected read, Solace by Belinda McKeon.

There will also be a Q&A with the author Belinda McKeown on the night, in person.

Solace tells the story of Mark Casey who has left home, the rural Irish community where his family has farmed the same land for generations, to study in Dublin.

He did not expect to fall in love but from the minute he saw Joanne Lynch, it seemed that nothing else was possible.

She just happens to be the daughter of a man who once spectacularly wronged Mark’s father Tom, and whose betrayal he has remembered every single day for twenty years.

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After the lightning strike of tragic loss, Tom and Mark are left with grief neither can fully acknowledge. Not even the magnitude of their mutual loss can alter the habit of silence.

Author Belinda McKeon is an Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, and academic, best known for her award-winning debut novel Solace (2011), which explores themes of family grief and rural Irish life, and her second novel Tender (2015), a coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of 1990s Dublin and the Celtic Tiger era.

Raised on a farm in County Longford, McKeown studied English and philosphy at Trinity College and UCD before earning an MFA in fiction from Columbia University.

Her career also encompasses short fiction published in prestigious outlets such as The Paris Review, Granta and The Stinging Fly, as well as plays produced in Dublin and New York, including the site-specific work Nora at the 2017 Dublin Theatre Festival.

Solace garnered critical acclaim, winning the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Sunday Independent Best Newcomer Award, and the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book of the Year, while also being shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

The book club is free and no booking is required, however members are asked to register via antain.ie so that they can keep up to date with all book club news and avail of some exclusive book club offers.

For information the Book Club’s next read or to register visit www.antain.ie or contact An Táin Arts Centre’s Box Office 042 933 2332.