Book Club: Trespasses by Louise Kennedy

It’s Belfast and the year is 1975, at the height of sectarian violence.

Cushla Lavery is 24 and works as a primary teacher in a school on the outskirts of the city. She also does the odd shift in the family pub, which is frequented by leering and aggressive British soldiers. Here she meets Michael Agnew: handsome, middle-aged, sophisticated, but married.

Michael is a Protestant barrister who defends young Catholic men who have been unjustly arrested. He invites Cushla to an “Irish language evening” with his bourgeois-bohemian friends, liberals who toy with pro-Republican politics.

Thus commences an affair that Cushla must keep secret from everyone, on pain – literally – of death.

This novel was a number one best-seller (The Times) and winner of numerous awards over 2022 and 2023.