Your cart

Close

Total AUD

Checkout
Search
Search Clear
View All Results
  1. Books
  2. Cathy Sweeney
  3. Breakdown: The humane Irish Bestseller about the dark side of modern motherhood
Play Sample

Imprint

  • W&N
  • W&N
  • W&N
  • W&N

Breakdown: The humane Irish Bestseller about the dark side of modern motherhood

Cathy Sweeney

4 Reviews

Rated 0

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), Feminism & feminist theory, Gender studies: women, Separation & divorce

'Mothers are not supposed to go on road trips.'

A debut novel from the author of Modern Times, a short story collection adored by Graham Norton, Jenny Offill, Sinead Gleeson and Kevin Barry

'Riveting from the start' IRISH INDEPENDENT
'Thrillingly relatable' HARPER'S BAZAAR
'A vivid portrait of a woman adrift' OBSERVER

Mothers are not supposed to go on road trips . . .

But one winter morning in Dublin, an ordinary woman wakes up in her ordinary home, her husband next to her in bed, her teenage children sleeping nearby. And - without thinking much about it - walks out the front door and never comes back.

So begins a journey which will take her into service stations and shopping centres, hotel bars and hairdressers - and the beds of strange men.

Until 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.

Read More Read Less

More books by Cathy Sweeney

Left
Modern Times loading...

Cathy Sweeney
Right

Praise for Breakdown: The humane Irish Bestseller about the dark side of modern motherhood

  • Cathy Sweeney is a 21st century Kafka, an Irish Ernaux. Breakdown is so vivid, so formally dazzling, and so startling. As with only the very, very best books, you will experience the world afresh having read this. It is a hugely important novel for the 21st century

  • A truthful and compassionate account of contemporary of marriage and motherhood that is as poignant as it is unsettling. Long after reading, Breakdown lingers in the mind

  • Cathy Sweeney is one of the most original writers at work today, and Breakdown is a novel of at once spectacular reach and unforgettable intimacy. Her writing gleams throughout like a stone underwater

  • Breakdown has an unflinching wisdom about the sacrifices we make to our integrity when we pretend at perfection, in marriage, in parenting, making a home. Sweeney's writing is starkly perceptive, brave and honest, challenging the universal fear of how easy it is to trip into free-fall and how hard it is to then go back

Read More Read Less

Cathy Sweeney

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.

Left
Right

Hachette Australia acknowledges and pays our respects to the past, present and future Traditional Owners and Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuation of cultural, spiritual and educational practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Our head office is located on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.

© Hachette Australia, All Rights Reserved · Site by Chook

Close
Loading Sorry, something's gone wrong. Please refresh the page and try again.
This website uses cookies. Using this website means you are okay with this but you can find out more and learn how to manage your cookie choices here.Close cookie policy overlay