3.5
The Glorious Heresies
ByPublisher Description
Winner of the 2016 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and the Desmond Elliott Prize
Shortlisted for Best Newcomer at the Irish Book Awards
Longlisted for the 2016 International Dylan Thomas Prize
The Irish Times March Book of the Month
From Lisa McInerney, hailed by The Irish Times as “arguably the most talented writer at work in Ireland today,” comes The Glorious Heresies, a searing debut novel about life on the fringes of Ireland’s post-crash society.
When grandmother Maureen Phelan is surprised in her home by a stranger, she clubs the intruder with a Holy Stone. The consequences of this unplanned murder connect four misfits struggling against their meager circumstances. Ryan is a fifteen-year-old drug dealer desperate not to turn out like his alcoholic father, Tony, whose feud with his next-door neighbor threatens to ruin his family. Georgie is a sex worker who half-heartedly joins a born-again movement to escape her profession and drug habit. And Jimmy Phelan, the most fearsome gangster in the city and Maureen’s estranged son, finds that his mother’s bizarre attempts at redemption threaten his entire organization.
Biting and darkly funny, The Glorious Heresies presents an unforgettable vision of a city plagued by poverty and exploitation, where salvation still awaits in the most unexpected places.
— New York Time's Book Review's "10 Best Crime Novels" of the year
Shortlisted for Best Newcomer at the Irish Book Awards
Longlisted for the 2016 International Dylan Thomas Prize
The Irish Times March Book of the Month
From Lisa McInerney, hailed by The Irish Times as “arguably the most talented writer at work in Ireland today,” comes The Glorious Heresies, a searing debut novel about life on the fringes of Ireland’s post-crash society.
When grandmother Maureen Phelan is surprised in her home by a stranger, she clubs the intruder with a Holy Stone. The consequences of this unplanned murder connect four misfits struggling against their meager circumstances. Ryan is a fifteen-year-old drug dealer desperate not to turn out like his alcoholic father, Tony, whose feud with his next-door neighbor threatens to ruin his family. Georgie is a sex worker who half-heartedly joins a born-again movement to escape her profession and drug habit. And Jimmy Phelan, the most fearsome gangster in the city and Maureen’s estranged son, finds that his mother’s bizarre attempts at redemption threaten his entire organization.
Biting and darkly funny, The Glorious Heresies presents an unforgettable vision of a city plagued by poverty and exploitation, where salvation still awaits in the most unexpected places.
— New York Time's Book Review's "10 Best Crime Novels" of the year
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Glorious Heresies Reviews
3.5
“Thoughts:
I struggled to get into this one. For some reason when I read the description I thought it was going to be humorous, but it is really bleak. The writing is lovely, but I eventually ended up switching from the ebook to the audiobook because I just never really felt like picking it up and reading. In the end I feel like objectively it deserves a 4 though my "enjoyment" was more like a 3. Still, now that my expectations have been properly adjusted I think I will likely listen to the other two books in the series.
Quotes:
“The Church creates its sinners so it has something to save.”
"It was a roof over his head. It was a fire hazard, in that he thought sometimes he could douse it in fuel and take a match to it and watch it take the night sky with it."
"He wondered if he should stop wondering, when a wandering mind was heresy."
"Georgie, small-town wild child and intermittent claustrophobe, self-styled, was into drugs well before she met Robbie."
"Locomotive chicanery for after the tears had dried up."
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
2026 📖 Read #7/Book #29
Shelf Indulgence Book Club March 2026
Come read with us!
https://tinyurl.com/FableSIBC”MemorableMorally ambiguousMultilayeredOriginalUnforgettable protagonistEpic scopeNonlinear narrativeTwistyUnpredictableUnsatisfying conclusionBleakDarkGrittyHarshOriginalAbuseChild abuseChild lossDeathDomestic violenceExplicit sexual contentGriefMisogynyMurderSelf-harmSexual assaultSubstance abuseViolence
“one of the blurbs on the back cover referred to this book as "sexy" ermmm not sure what was sexy about all the underage sex, pedophilia, abuse, and drug addicted prostitutes 😒”
About Lisa McInerney
Lisa McInerney’s first novel, The Glorious Heresies, won the 2016 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Desmond Elliott Prize, was shortlisted for Best Newcomer at the Irish Book Awards, and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her short stories have been featured on BBC Radio 4 and in Granta, the Stinging Fly, and the anthologies The Long Gaze Back and Faber’s Town and Country. Lisa lives in Galway with her husband, their daughter, and a dog named Angua.
Other books by Lisa McInerney
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