This novel was long-listed for the 2014 Man Booker Prize. I think it should have won. It's impossible to describe how much I loved this novel, truly, everyone should read it.
It's set in County Clare, where it always rains. The incredibly smart Ruth Swain, 19, is bedbound, where she has her father's library of 3958 books to read. She's trying to find her much-loved father through reading his books, but also relating to us, the readers, her family story over the last few generations. It's a powerful and rich story, told with humour, irony and the most extraordinarily poetic, lyrical prose you're ever likely to read. I had to keep stopping, re-reading, reading aloud, not believing how a phrase or a sentence could just sing so.
They get a dog called Huck: "It's still the time when dogs are allowed to run free on beaches. The Minister for Poo hasn't been elected yet. So when we come down on the big horseshoe beach Aeney lets Huck go and Huck goes running like he's never run before, like sand and shore and sea-wind are marvels particular for dogs. He runs and you feel joy. You can't explain that. He runs head out and ears back, like he can't get to where he's going fast enough, like his blood remembers beaches from a world before and what beaches mean is freedom."
Effortlessly profound, monumentally moving, absolutely brilliant.