New Island swoops for love story from Meehan

New Island has scooped Instant Fires, an “absorbing and considered” love story from Andrew Meehan. 

Commissioning editor Aoife K Walsh acquired English language, Ireland, UK and Commonwealth rights from Sarah Williams at Sophie Hicks Agency. The novel will be published on 9th September 2022. 

The synopsis reads: “After 15 years in a relationship with a man she did not love, Ute Pfeiffer has returned from Ireland to find her father, Julius, in decline and her mother, Christa, more distant than ever. The last thing she needs is to fall for another Irishman. But when she sees Seanie Donnellan crashing into a chicken coop in her parents’ yard, something seems to shift in her cautious heart. Ute has given up on love and Seanie has never really known it. He also knows nothing of her family’s unspoken history during the war, nor how Ute muted this sadness with a sheltered life that she hated. But Seanie is a strange and charming young man with emotional aches of his own, confounding all of her expectations and daring her to hope for the first time."

“As her father returns to a kind of childhood, and her mother’s longing spills over in the revelation of a family secret, Ute must decide if falling in love is something that happens to other people or if it’s a choice only she can make.” 

Walsh commented: “We instantly fell for Ute and Seanie, two gentle, hesitant, weathered souls, living perfectly fine and convincing lives, still young enough for the ‘could’ of love but old enough to stay in the ‘should’ of life. So accustomed to looking the other way, their spark almost doesn’t catch, but helped along by Andrew’s exquisite instincts for humour and tenderness and his pitch-perfect literary flair, Ute and Seanie unknowingly and gingerly embark on a prelude to love. This is as much fun for us to read as it is for Andrew to write, so we found ourselves rooting for these two post-hope lovebirds from the very first pages. Andrew was and continues to be a dream author to work with. The enthusiasm goes both ways, which makes for a very exciting publishing adventure for all of us here at New Island this autumn.”

Meehan said: “Ute Pfeiffer and Seanie Donnellan lived for many years in separate notebooks. Only when I moved to Heidelberg, Germany, and put them in the same notebook did Instant Fires come to life. I used to live in Heidelberg with my partner, and our years there were like a time out of life. As we were getting ready to move to Glasgow, I started to put Ute and Seanie into the shape of a novel. The whole experience of writing it was like holding on to the last days of an important summer. Instant Fires is my third book, but in my love for Ute and Seanie, and my enjoyment in their company, it feels like my first.”