Ruth & Pen

The brilliant debut novel from Emilie Pine, author of the international bestseller Notes to Self

Dublin, 7 October 2019

One day, one city, two women: Ruth and Pen. Neither knows the other, but both are asking the same questions: how to be with others and how, when the world won't make space for you, to be with yourself?

Ruth's marriage to Aidan is in crisis. Today she needs to make a choice - to stay or not to stay, to take the risk of reaching out, or to pull up the drawbridge. For teenage Pen, today is the day the words will flow, and she will speak her truth to Alice, to ask for what she so desperately wants.

Deeply involving, poignant and radiantly intelligent, it is a portrait of the limits of grief and love, of how we navigate our inner and outer landscapes, and the tender courage demanded by the simple, daily quest of living.
'Emilie Pine is one of the most important new voices in Irish Literature. Everything she writes is imbued with wisdom' David Park
'Emilie Pine's debut novel is ambitious, poignant and playful, with a feminist nod to Joyce . . . it is as surprising and playful as it is ambitious and relevant' Irish Independent
'This is an exciting, warm and engaging debut that signals, one hopes, even greater things to come' The Business Post

WINNER OF THE KATE O'BRIEN AWARD