From one of Ireland's most provocative and admired writers comes a story of rage and reckoning, joy and transformation, and one woman's decision to leave everything behind.

'Thrillingly relatable' HARPER'S BAZAAR

'A striking debut from a highly original writer' IRISH TIMES

'A vivid portrait of a woman adrift' OBSERVER

One winter morning on an ordinary day in contemporary Dublin, an ordinary middle-class woman wakes up in her ordinary suburban home. Her husband is next to her in bed, her teenage children sleeping nearby.

Without thinking much about it, she walks out the front door and never comes back.

She travels first by car, then train, then ferry. Along the way, she finds herself in service stations and shopping centres, hotel bars and hairdressers - and in the beds of strange men.

Finally, forty-eight hours later, alone in a cottage in Wales, the woman faces up to what she has been ignoring inside herself, her family, modern society: signs of breakdown.

'This funny, thoughtful novel will resonate with lots of women' GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

'Riveting from the start' IRISH INDEPENDENT

'A gripping character study' DAILY MAIL

CATHY SWEENEY is a writer living in Ireland. Her short fiction has been published in the Stinging Fly, the Dublin Review, Egress , Winter Papers , Banshee and the Tangerine, and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Her debut short story collection, Modern Times, was published in 2020 and her debut novel, Breakdown, in 2024.