Sarah Crossan can say so much with so few words, and that is the incredible power of her writing. She conveys a thousand emotions through a few lines of prose, words that you could dissect over and over again in multiple different ways. Her books are a work of art and this, a masterpiece.
This is an emotive retelling of the Irish Famine – and without quite realising it, you’ve learnt a lot by the very last pages. It’s a love story but also a tragedy, and Sarah has a way with words that can handle both ends of the emotive spectrum with the talent of a classic writer.
This is the Independent bookshop edition pictured – that we have in stock of Where the Heart Should Be and it has beautiful end-papers, gold foilIng under the dust jacket and has been signed by the Author herself.
About the Book
The outstanding novel from the Carnegie Medal-winning, former Laureate na nÓg Sarah Crossan; thought-provoking and incredibly moving, it explores love and family during The Great Hunger.
Ireland, 1846. Nell is working as a scullery maid in the kitchen of the Big House. Once she loved school and books and dreaming. But there’s not much choice of work when the land grows food that rots in the earth. Now she is scrubbing, peeling, washing, sweeping for Sir Philip Wicken, the man who owns her home, her family’s land, their crops, everything. His dogs are always well fed, even as famine sets in.
Upstairs in the Big House, where Nell is forbidden to enter, is Johnny Browning, newly arrived from England: the young nephew who will one day inherit it all. And as hunger and disease run rampant all around them, a spark of life and hope catches light when Nell and Johnny find each other.
This is a love story, and the story of a people being torn apart. This is a powerful and unforgettable novel from the phenomenally talented Sarah Crossan.
About The Author
Sarah Crossan grew up in Dublin and London. Her books for children and teenagers have won many prizes including the prestigious CILIP Carnegie Medal, the CBI Book of the Year, the YA Book Prize, and the CLiPPA Poetry Award.
Her first novel for adults, Here Is The Beehive, was published in 2020 to critical acclaim, and was shortlisted for Popular Fiction Book of the Year in the AN Post Irish Book Awards
Purchase the Book
This book can be purchased in our store either on its own or in a cosy Book Box.
No responses yet