His mother tragically dies when Ryan is younger, leaving him & his five younger siblings in the care of his father, Tony Cusack. Born of a Neapolitan mother and a Corkonian father, Ryan grew up surrounded by anger & alcohol. Ryan Cusack, is the product of a very troubled family. He wasn’t going to feed it anymore from here on in it would be squared shoulders and jaws, and strong arms and best feet forward.’ ‘He left the boy outside its own front door. We are introduced to Ryan Cusack, a young fifteen year old, with a crush on the beautiful Karine D’Arcy. The Glorious Heresies packs a serious punch.įrom the opening lines, I knew that this was going to be something different. īiting, moving and darkly funny, The Glorious Heresies explores salvation, shame and the legacy of Ireland’s twentieth-century attitudes to sex and family.’ ( Courtesy of Goodreads) In seeking atonement for the murder and a multitude of other perceived sins, Maureen threatens to destroy everything her son has worked so hard for, while her actions risk bringing the intertwined lives of the Irish underworld into the spotlight. Georgie is a prostitute whose willingness to feign a religious conversion has dangerous repercussions, while Maureen, the accidental murderer, has returned to Cork after forty years in exile to discover that Jimmy, the son she was forced to give up years before, has grown into the most fearsome gangster in the city. Ryan is a fifteen-year-old drug dealer desperate not to turn out like his alcoholic father Tony, whose obsession with his unhinged next-door neighbour threatens to ruin him and his family. ‘One messy murder affects the lives of five misfits who exist on the fringes of Ireland’s post-crash society.

This book I bought myself in Waterstones Cork and my review is as honest as ever. ‘He wondered if he should stop wondering, when a wandering mind was a heresy.’Ģ016 Bailey’s Prize Winner Lisa McInerney’s novel The Glorious Heresies was released through John Murray Publishers earlier this year.Ī gritty debut, The Glorious Heresies is a harsh look at the underworld belly of drugs, drink and prostitution with Cork humour thrown in!! National Emerging Writer Programme Overview.

The glorious heresies review