![]() But today, there’s another man sitting at the bar, older, nursing a whisky. Sometimes there are soldiers at the tables who, shall we say, tend to be over-friendly to Cushla. The bar is being propped by the team of regulars, Jimmy, Minty, Leslie and Fidel, the latter being in the Ulster Defence Army. t was one thing to drink in a Catholic-owned bar quite another to have your pint pulled by a woman smeared in papish warpaint. Most of the men who drank in the pub did not get ashes on Ash Wednesday or do the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday or go to Mass on Sunday. ![]() As the novel begins, Cushla is starting her shift in the family pub run by her brother Eamonn, having come from the School’s service for the first day of Lent. As you may guess, religious politics will play a large part in their inevitably doomed relationship. Cushla is a young Catholic teacher in her mid-twenties, who falls for an older Protestant barrister and family man. It is set in County Down at the time of the Troubles in the early 1970s, and tells the story of two star-crossed lovers – one Catholic, one Protestant. ![]() ![]() My second book for Reading Ireland month hosted by Cathy, I’m really glad to have read this superb novel, which has recently been longlisted for the Women’s Prize. ![]()
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