Harvill Secker scoops vibrant Feeney novel in two-book deal

Harvill Secker has secured the "brilliant" How to Build a Boat from Elaine Feeney in a two-book deal.

Kate Harvey, publishing director, acquired world all language rights, including audio, from Peter Straus at RCW. How to Build a Boat will be published in June 2023. 

Feeney’s debut novel, As You Were (Vintage), was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Irish Novel of the Year Award and won the Kate O’Brien Award, the McKitterick Prize and the Dalkey Festival Emerging Writer Award. Her second “intensely moving” novel follows a remarkable boy and his dream.  

The synopsis reads: “At age 13 Jamie O’Neill loves the colour red, as well as the London Underground map, the number three, rain that comes with wind, the mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, and Edgar Allen Poe. But what he wants most of all is to build a Perpetual Motion Machine and to connect with his mother Noelle, who died when he was born. In his beautiful mind these things are intimately linked. When he finds two teachers who are prepared to help him with his mission, all of their lives are transformed.”  

Harvey said: “This book is a precious gift: a celebration of family, community and the world of the imagination, serious in the way it sets about tending to pain, radiant with hope. I completely fell for Jamie and for the adults around him and while my heart was being turned inside out I learnt to make a currach. Elaine is a magician with language and she really understands people: How to Build a Boat will connect with readers everywhere. We couldn’t be prouder to publish this beautiful novel at Vintage and will make it unmissable next summer.”  

“How to Build a Boat was inspired by the journeys we take and how our paths are defined by those we meet, those we love, those who have loved us, and the unique patterns these connections create,” added Feeney. “I am so honoured that Harvill Secker are publishing How to Build a Boat, delighted that the Vintage team will bring this novel to readers, and finally, I am so grateful to work alongside my brilliant editor, Kate Harvey—her care for the work never fails to amaze me.”