A Beautiful Loan

[A] deeply humane novel that lingers long after the final page * * Irish Independent * *
There is no greater chronicler of the inner life -- MICHAEL AMHERST * * Guardian * *
True, pure, profound -- CLAIRE MESSUD
One of Ireland's greatest writers . . . 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 novel * * Times Literary Supplement * *
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 * *
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 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 * *
A Beautiful Loan is a quietly devastating psychological novel about a woman's search for love, meaning and selfhood. . . . Told in Anna's first-person voice and in the present tense, the novel offers an intimate portrait of her inner and outer worlds. On the surface, all seems calm as she recounts her journey from circumspect young teacher to mature woman, yet an undercurrent of unease runs throughout, bubbling up in unsettling moments of insight that give the writing subtle intensity * * Sunday Independent Review * *