Haven (from The Sunday Times Bestselling Author Of Room)

By (author) Donoghue Emma
Short description/annotation
A story of survival set in 600 AD Ireland; a parable of patriarchy, destruction and religion at sea.
Description

''Everything a novel should be: compassionate, unpredictable, and questioning. Haven is Donoghue at her strange, unsettling best.'' - Maggie O''Farrell, author of Hamnet

In seventh-century Ireland, a priest has a dream telling him to leave the sinful world behind. Taking two monks with him, he travels down the Shannon in search of an isolated spot on which to found a new place of worship. Drifting out into the Atlantic, the three men find an impossibly steep, bare island inhabited by tens of thousands of birds, and claim it for God. But in such a place, far from all other humanity, what will survival mean?

‘Haven is a beautiful, bold blaze of a book’ Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

‘Beautiful and timely’ - Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater

‘Sinister, heart-wrenching and beautifully written’ The Times

‘Combines pressure-cooker intensity and radical isolation, to stunning effect’ Margaret Atwood via Twitter

‘Book of the Year’ pick in The Irish Times, The Guardian, The Irish Post, RTÉ and The Times.

Pre-order Learned by Heart, the dazzling new love story from Emma Donoghue.

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A remarkably engrossing tale
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This book kept me up half the night - I was unable to put it down, and read it in one spellbound gulp. It is everything a novel should be: compassionate, unpredictable, and questioning. Haven is Donoghue at her strange, unsettling best.
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Brooding, dreamlike . . . it’s in descriptions of the physical world that Donoghue’s prose soars . . . Likewise, among themes that include isolation and devotion, its ecological warnings are its most resonant.
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Quietly beautiful . . . And its subject, of course, is a universal one: we’re all stuck on this rock, trying to keep hold of simple moral truths while quietly losing our minds. As poor young Trian puts it, in one of his darkest moments: “Even this unbearable life is still sweet."
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Donoghue excels in creating not just a world but a worldview that is far removed from our own . . . this is a bold, thoughtful novel.
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A beautiful and timely novel about isolation, passion and the conflict between obedience and self-preservation. The island setting and the characters stayed with me long after I finished reading
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Donoghue wrings unlikely psychodrama from such everyday chores of monastic life as copying a manuscript or building a drystone wall. But if that doesn’t grab you, rest assured that the devastating denouement amply repays the reader’s patience — and has a thing or two to say about modern-day moral panics, too
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A powerful story, brilliantly imagined.
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Haven creates an eerie, meditative atmosphere that should resonate with anyone willing to think deeply about the blessings and costs of devoting one’s life to a transcendent cause.
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In 7th C, Ireland, three men set sail to a bird-thick island to find God. EmmaDonoghue combines pressure-cooker intensity + radical isolation, to stunning effect. What is Divine Grace? Purity of soul? Virtue? Not what they think.
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Sinister, heart-wrenching and beautifully written.
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A grim and grisly tale of monastic privation and isolation in seventh-century Ireland . . . [Donoghue] deftly captures the elem