The Amendments

Author: Niamh Mulvey

Genres: Literary Fiction

Delving into the lives of three generations of women, The Amendments by Niamh Mulvey is an extraordinary novel about love and freedom, belonging and rebellion – and about how our past is a vital presence which sits alongside us.

Nell and her partner Adrienne are about to have a baby. For Adrienne, it’s the start of a new life. For Nell, it’s the reason the two of them are sitting in a therapist’s office. Because she can’t go into this without dealing with the truth: that she has been a mother before, and now she can hardly bring herself to speak to her own mother, let alone return home to Ireland.

Nell is running out of places to hide from her past.

But to Ireland and the past is where she must go, and that is where The Amendments takes us: to the heat of Nell’s teenage years in the early 2000s, as Ireland was unpicking itself from its faith and embracing the hedonism of the Celtic Tiger. To 1983, when Nell’s mother Dolores was grappling with the tensions of the women’s rights movement. And then to the farms and suburbs and towns that made and unmade the lives at the centre of this story, bound together by the terrible secret that Nell still cannot face.

Selected by the Irish Independent, the Irish Times, the Irish Journal and VIP as one of the most anticipated novels of the year.

“Empathetic writing shines through in engaging debut”
- The Irish Examiner

“A questing first novel of significant prowess . . . Mulvey touches on complex questions of belonging, freedom and motherhood”
- The Observer

“The Amendments is an opening salvo from a novelist of grit and power”
- The Irish Times

“Empathetic writing shines through in engaging debut”
- The Irish Examiner

“Elegant prose and an earnest engagement with emotional integrity are the hallmarks of this engrossing coming-of-age tale . . . The novel brims with drama and dilemmas as Nell and her mother together tackle the thorny issues of faith, freedom and feminism in a cloistered society”
- Mail on Sunday

“Niamh Mulvey's wonderfully compelling characters and deft, clear prose offer great pleasure to the reader. Her sense of political and cultural change is sharp, and the beauty she finds in days of struggle is haunting.”
- Joseph O'Connor, author of My Father's House and Star of the Sea

“I loved The Amendments by Niamh Mulvey. Rare is the novel that is as significant as it is enjoyable: her characters glimmer with heart and soul, her writing is beautiful and her themes profound. It's a book about mothers and daughters, friendship, hope, bravery and what it means to believe in something. A fantastic and important achievement.”
- Emma Stonex, author of The Lamplighters

“A smart, subtle, engrossing and moving novel that gives voice to so much that's unspoken about Ireland and about youth.”
- Emma Donoghue, playwright and literary scholar

“An extraordinary achievement. The Amendments is about a lot of things - love, family, girlhood, growing up, sex, legacy, compassion - all blended into a moving plot, expertly handled. Wonderful.”
- Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist

“There’s so much casually imparted wisdom in Mulvey’s writing that reading her work feels as if you’ve been through therapy without realising it. The Amendments is a compelling, beautifully observed novel about the long reach of shame in the lives of Irish women across generations.”
- Sarah Gilmartin, author of Service

“Niamh Mulvey has written a deft and deeply moving fiction about cross-generational secrets and longings, because such is the stuff of our everyday, dramatic, secretive lives. This is a work of beauty and insight.”
- Ed O'Loughlin, author of Not Untrue and Not Unkind

“It is a long time since I’ve read a more involving novel. The Amendments is ambitious in its political thought, but also intimate and rooted in compelling relationships...Niamh Mulvey’s powerful novel takes Ireland’s constitution changes, the amendments of the title, and shows what had to go on in ordinary homes across the country for them to happen; Irish people – perhaps most especially women – were trying to shake off inherited values.”
- Garrett Carr