Elske Rahill – författare

‘This is an exquisite book; uncanny, inventive and utterly human. Elske Rahill is arguably the most talented writer working in Ireland today’ Louise Kennedy, author of TrespassesLaura is in Paris with her husband Austin. A year after a terrible, life-altering loss, she is still numb, experiencing the world at a remove. But now there is a new crisis: a rapidly expanding international pandemic and lockdown. Unable to get back to Ireland, Laura and Austin head to a neglected château in the Cevennes, the property of Austin’s old family friends. But their new home is anything but a refuge. The house is strange; shadows slither and crawl when the lights are out, and there is talk of a mysterious cult in the commune just up the road. When the disappearance of a neighbour puts a newly motherless child in their care, Laura and Austin are driven to greater acts of desperation. And when their host at last arrives in the dead of night, Laura finds herself sucked into a terrifying undertow of obsession, violence - and rebirth.A terrifying confrontation of the maternal and the monstrous, the terror of loss and the power of death, Night Feeding is at once eerie and visceral, revelatory and depraved, seductive and disturbing - and marks the arrival of a major new talent.

‘This is an exquisite book; uncanny, inventive and utterly human. Elske Rahill is arguably the most talented writer working in Ireland today’ Louise Kennedy, author of TrespassesLaura is in Paris with her husband Austin. A year after a terrible, life-altering loss, she is still numb, experiencing the world at a remove. But now there is a new crisis: a rapidly expanding international pandemic and lockdown. Unable to get back to Ireland, Laura and Austin head to a neglected château in the Cevennes, the property of Austin’s old family friends. But their new home is anything but a refuge. The house is strange; shadows slither and crawl when the lights are out, and there is talk of a mysterious cult in the commune just up the road. When the disappearance of a neighbour puts a newly motherless child in their care, Laura and Austin are driven to greater acts of desperation. And when their host at last arrives in the dead of night, Laura finds herself sucked into a terrifying undertow of obsession, violence - and rebirth.A terrifying confrontation of the maternal and the monstrous, the terror of loss and the power of death, Night Feeding is at once eerie and visceral, revelatory and depraved, seductive and disturbing - and marks the arrival of a major new talent.

''Rahill is a stylist of the highest calibre... Molly''s voice has a lilting brogue that sings from the page. Rahill''s prose is alive with inventive phrasings and imagistic virtuosity, especially in its presentation of the intimate experience of the fleshly body – the maternal body, the cruelly waning body, the body tormented by a conflicted and unravelling mind. I''ve seldom read a novel so rich in poetry'' GUARDIAN. Molly is now in her eighties and she helps her grand-daughters Cara and Freya bring up their young children with unstinting care. Hers has been a life of unselfpitying service, from her working-class Dublin girlhood to her current status as the wealthy widow of a famous artist. But her own children, particularly her daughter Eileen, are her life''s great failure: unhappy, self-indulgent women who resent the younger generation''s apparent freedom from guilt and their unconventional family arrangements. This intricate web of female relationships comes under terrible strain when Molly, her health sapped by her constant efforts on behalf of others, decides to consult the family solicitor about changing her will. This is a novel of great tenderness in its depiction of the small pleasures of family life and ruthless in its portrayal of the dangerous power of money. ''Powerful... Heartbreaking and beautifully observed'' Irish Times.

Motherhood, nurture and violence – these are the themes of Elske Rahill''s remarkable first collection, In White Ink. Rahill brings to life the psychological and physical reality of mothering, pregnancy and childbirth in ways that few others writers have attempted. Here is a biting realism, in the relations between men and women and in the expectations and failures of their assigned roles. Each story is illumined by moments of harsh poetry. They are carefully crafted snapshots of our condition. In the title story, an isolated young mother is locked in to a custody battle with her abusive husband; ''Right to Reply'' shows three generations of women confronting the terrible legacy of their family''s past; in ''Toby'', a woman obsessed with hygiene finally snaps, when she finds her home is infested with fleas. The precision of Rahill''s prose, the stoicism of her unflinching narrative gaze, reveal characters caught up in violently emotional situations. The version of motherhood found here is painful. Yet its endurance, as nature''s greatest force, is brilliantly and compassionately rendered.

The French call it entre chien et loup . . . Darkly moving, often shocking, this interwoven story follows three college students, desperately searching for a place between the familiar and the strange as they careen towards self- knowledge. Cassandra, volatile and scarred by loss, has been sculpted by the bohemian high life and then discarded. Oisín, a country boy pulsing with sexual aggression, is prone to equal flights of rage and compassion. And you, Helen. Helen, who takes these two fractured lives and dashes them against herself, creating ripples that twist and distort their images of what should be. In this stunning debut novel, each character forces the boundaries of normality, negotiating the chasms of their own violent sexuality and decay.

This, the fifth and final volume in the Trinity Tales series, completes a cycle that began with tales from the 1960s. It invites readers to step into the world of Trinity College as it was in the first decade of this century through the reflections of students who attended the university during those years.Within its pages lie the stories of twenty-eight graduates from a mix of diverse backgrounds whose experiences may dispel the myths of what it means to be a ‘Trinity student’. The collection reveals the rapidly changing world of the early 2000s. This was a time of the internet revolution, when social media first affected student life, when mobile phones and laptops became ubiquitous, when handwritten work was passing into history, when The Buttery closed its doors – and all this coming against the backdrop of an overheating then imploding Irish economy.This kaleidoscope of recollections captures a student body in transformation and features stories of personal discovery and achievement against the odds. For some it proved a life-changing era when sexual, racial or class barriers were confronted.This volume concludes a remarkable half-century journey, portraying the lives of others, and of ourselves.