John Murray signs McInerney debut

John Murray Publishers has acquired a debut novel by Irish writer Lisa McInerney.

Mark Richards, editorial director at the John Murray Press imprint, bought world rights to The Glorious Heresies from Ivan Mulcahy of Mulcahy Associates.

The Glorious Heresies follows five characters who exist on the fringes of Ireland’s post-crash society, and who are affected by a “messy murder”.

Ryan is a 15-year-old drug dealer desperate not to turn out like his alcoholic father Tony, whose obsession with his unhinged next-door-neighbour threatens to ruin him. Georgie is a prostitute whose willingness to feign a religious conversion has grave dangerous repercussions. Maureen, the accidental murderer, has returned to Cork after 40 years in exile to discover that the son she was forced to give up has grown into the most fearsome gangster in the city.

Richards said: “Lisa is a rare and mighty talent: the novel contains manslaughter, murder, prostitution, alcoholism, drug-dealing and arson – and that’s just for starters – but it’s so funny and exuberant, so possessed of a kind of wild joy, that even when it’s dealing in the darkest of matters it’s never anything less than an exhilarating read.”

McInerney started a blog about working class life in a Galway council estate in 2006, and writes a twice-monthly column for TheJournal.ie.

The Glorious Heresies will be published in hardback in April 2015.