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Farrell and Son
  • Published: 11 February 2027
  • ISBN: 9781405992268
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256

Farrell and Son

Formats & editions
EBook
11 Feb 2027
Audiobook
11 Feb 2027
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Bittersweet contemporary Irish fiction about life and death, secrets and lies, and one small family in crisis

Mick Farrell is the only funeral director in Ballyrowan. He is also a very unpopular man - pedantic, tight-fisted and stiff as a corpse. His long-suffering wife Catriona works alongside him, preparing the departed for their final send-off. Their daughter Niamh, a sweet, strange girl, can't wait to grow up and join the family business. She isn't allowed inside the funeral parlour but she sneaks in whenever she can to watch her parents tending to the dead.

But when the Farrells, who have made death their business, are suddenly confronted by grief themselves, the fault-lines running through their eccentric home start to fracture. Catriona's mental health teeters on a knife edge. Mick is drawn back to dangerous old temptations. And Niamh, left to her own devices as her parents unravel, resorts to confiding in a recently deceased old lady, the latest customer to pass through the funeral home, and is astonished to hear the corpse speaking back…
  • Published: 11 February 2027
  • ISBN: 9781405992268
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256
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About the author

Orla Mackey

Orla Mackey is a writer and teacher based in Kilkenny. She studied English Literature at Trinity College, Dublin. Her first novel, Mouthing, was an Irish Times bestseller. Her second novel, Farrell and Son, will be published in spring 2027.
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Also by Orla Mackey

Mouthing
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Praise for Farrell and Son

Engrossing, acerbic and brilliant... It is by turns funny, horrifying and all too real

Irish Times on 'Mouthing'

Farrell and Son fizzes with life - as tragedy and comedy, microscopic and epic, a novel of beautifully realised contrasts - set amid the textured vitality of a small rural community and playing out in the not-so-silent presence of death. In Orla Mackey's hands, life is fragile and funny and sometimes heartstoppingly moving

Kathleen MacMahon, author of 'Nothing But Blue Sky'

A polyphonic tour de force... I got a giddy feeling in my chest reading it. By turns hilarious and deeply moving, Farrell & Son encapsulates the multitude of reasons why the website RIP.ie is so firmly embedded in the Irish national psyche. I finished the novel with a determination to read anything that Orla Mackey writes

Louise Nealon, author of 'Everything That Is Beautiful'

Farrell and Son is a profound novel of grief and recovery told with compassion and subtle brilliance... populated by characters that continually reveal new layers of complexity and contradiction

Neil Tully, author of 'The Visit'