Room For A Single Lady

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'A sharp eye for detail that makes reading Boylan's work such a pleasure' Sunday Times

To Eugene Rafferty, girls are like money - they have to be saved. Despite living in 1950s Dublin, his three daughters, Bridie, Kitty and Rose, seem doomed to a Victorian childhood. However, as fortunes decline the Rafferty's are forced to take in lodgers and these independent but eccentric outsiders introduce the girls to new experiences - sex and superstition, of spite, of true love and tragedy. For in a world caught between the aftershock of the war and the transforming liberalism of the 1960s there are two states of womanhood: single, and caught up in the comic and desperate search for a suitable husband, or married and enduring the claustrophobia of suburban life.

Evoking the magic of childhood and adolescence with rare subtlety, wit and warmth, Room For A Single Lady is both delightfully comic and genuinely moving.

Praise for Room For A Single Lady

  • A sharp eye for detail that makes reading Boylan's work such a pleasure - SUNDAY TIMES

  • This enchanting book, so evocative of the moods and sensations of childhood has the bite of pure gold - DAILY TELEGRAPH

  • Witty ... beautifully written - MAIL ON SUNDAY

  • Boylan writes like an angel, but an angel with a knowing eye - DAILY MAIL

Clare Boylan

Clare Boylan was the author of five novels and three volumes of short stories. Her last novel, ROOM FOR A SINGLE LADY, was published by Little, Brown in September 1997.

She died in May 2006.

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