Bad Day in Blackrock

Book excerpt: **Inspiration for the 2012 award-winning film What Richard Did – from the author of White City, available for pre-order now** 'An excellent novel... It comes from the gut, it's raw, it's passionate' John Boyne, author of The Boy in Striped Pyjamas On a late August night a young man is kicked to death outside a Dublin nightclub and celebration turns to devastation. The reverberations of that event, its genesis and aftermath, are the subject of this extraordinary story, stripping away the veneer of a generation of Celtic cubs, whose social and sexual mores are chronicled and dissected in this tract for our times. The victim, Conor Harris, his killers - three of them are charged with manslaughter - and the trial judge share common childhoods and schooling in the privileged echelons of south Dublin suburbia. The intertwining of these lives leaves their afflicted families in moral free fall as public exposure merges with private anguish and imploded futures. Praise for Kevin Power: 'Kevin Power is an author of magnificent control, stirring the deepest compassion with restless anger in this piercing contemporary novel' Frank McGuinness 'This novel marks the debut of a deeply moral and probing writer - and a potentially great one' Sunday Post (Ireland) 'White City is a dark, hilarious and emotionally profound study of the toxic effects of greed and entitlement. Also, a story brilliantly and movingly told. Couldn’t stop reading it. Will read it again' Ed O'Loughlin, author of Not Untrue and Not Unkind and This Eden 'This is part thriller but mostly a look at what it means to grow up... full of ridiculously beautiful, polished, & often scathing sentences. This novel is pleasing on so many levels, both intellectually & emotionally... You'll laugh, you'll cry... Read it, read it, read it' Claire Hennessy, author, editor & publisher at Banshee Press