A Beautiful Loan

Costello is one of Ireland's greatest writers . . . Her prose is precise and focused and, like a stiletto blade, sinks deep . . . This is a big book in a small package, about one woman's growth -- JOHN SELF * * Financial Times * *
A Beautiful Loan is a beautiful novel; Mary Costello guides her reader through a cloud of emotional turmoil in fine, controlled sentences. We must hope it delivers her the belated recognition she so richly deserves -- LUCY THYNNE * * Times Literary Supplement * *
Many authors describe the writer's principal duty as one of attention: to the world around us, in all its beauty and ugliness. In a sense, this is also a moral act. Costello does this in all her work. That we as readers might be surprised by the significance and profundity she renders to each and every life is a measure of her depth of attention, and perhaps why there is no greater chronicler of the inner life at this moment. As artificial intelligence and big tech force an increasingly diminished definition upon us of what it means to be human, this novel reminds us that we are so much more -- MICHAEL AMHERST * * Guardian * *
An exceptional, compulsive novel of love, loss and courage. Told in poetic, clear-eyed prose, A Beautiful Loan is heart-breaking but unsentimental, and easily Costello's best work yet -- SINEAD GLEESON
Mary Costello is a writer of a rare and exquisite sensitivity - intimate, piercing, death-haunted - with sentences that can turn on a pin into vastness -- PAUL LYNCH
A deeply-felt exploration of women's pain, precisely attuned to the nuances of psychic suffering, and to the ways that our human longing is a misplaced longing for the divine, this is an intensely moving and exquisitely-written novel -- LUCY CALDWELL
A Beautiful Loan is like a beautiful piece of music: true, pure, profound. Anna's quest, in mid-life, to understand herself and the forces that have shaped her thus far, moves and compels. The spirit of Camus, that humane existentialist, hovers over the novel like hope. I am filled with admiration for Mary Costello -- CLAIRE MESSUD, author of 'This Strange Eventful History'
Mary Costello's A Beautiful Loan creates a gripping and unsparing portrait of Anna Hughes, whose longing to find 'safety and oneness,' and to submit to love, deepens as both inner and outer worlds close in. This unsettling novel opened before me like a Rorschach test, troubling all my interpretations -- MADELEINE THIEN, author of 'The Book of Records'
This beautiful book has a hurrying heartbeat like a drum, hurrying us toward something we can't bear to learn. Mary Costello's writing is rich in knowing, in yearning, in grief, in a deep understanding of the heart -- ROXANNA ROBINSON, author of 'Leaving'
Praise for Mary Costello: Costello's writing has the kind of urgency that the great problems demand -- ANNE ENRIGHT