Author: Sarah Gilmartin
Genres: Literary Fiction
A glance between them can still conjure their younger selves: dancing beneath pulsing lights, the sharp taste of salt after swims in Dublin Bay.
Two decades on, life feels smaller. Dylan, once a rugby star, is stranded on the sofa, cared for by his wife Rachel. Across town, Stevie and Ben's relationship has settled into weary routine.
Then, after countless auditions, Ben lands a role in Pinter's Betrayal. As rehearsals unfold, the play's shifting allegiances seep into reality, reviving old jealousies and awakening sudden longings, as each must reckon with how far they're willing to go in pursuit of desire.
Wry, sexy and deftly observed, Little Vanities is a novel about the dangerous thrill of stepping outside the roles we've been given - and the distance between the lives we imagine and the ones we live.
Featured in Image 26 books to look forward to in 2026, The Irish Times The best fiction of 2026 to look forward to and Summer reading hitlist, The Journal 16 Irish books to watch out for in 2026, The Times as well as podcasts RTE One, Life in Pages, and A Pair of Bookends.
“Gilmartin is a natural writer: she gives us terrific, complex characters and strong themes, in a prose that is fluent and charged with insight.”
- Anne Enright, author of The Wren, The Wren“A really wonderful storyteller.”
- Joseph O’Connor, author of Star of the Sea“Gilmartin has a forensic eye for the little moments and mumbled asides. . . She writes sharply and cleanly but always with a degree of compassion.”
- Jan Carson, author of The Raptures“Sarah Gilmartin writes so well about failure and disappointment, the curdling of youthful optimism. And her skills as a playwright allow her set pieces to unfold as if on stage with electrifying effect — there are dramas within dramas here and the unravelling is exhilarating when it comes”
- Clare Chambers“Sarah Gilmartin writes about relationships with great precision and insight. Her subject is agency - how ineptly we use it when we're young, how imperceptibly we lose it as youth recedes. Her characters find themselves trapped by their life choices and reckoning with the cost of overturning them. This is a scrupulous and elegant novel about the realities of adulthood”
- Kathleen MacMahon“In Little Vanities […], dramatic turning points are not in short supply: the novel is bookended by a fraught game of poker and a catastrophic children’s birthday party.”
- Miriam Balanescu, Financial Times“From the very first page, we get friendship, lies, recrimination, resentment, jealousy, betrayal and sex, bidden and forbidden. In other words, all the good stuff. […] In all three of her novels, Gilmartin excels at complex and authentic characters.”
- Edel Coffey, The Irish Times“It’s a midlife-crisis novel, full of sharp wit and sharper wisdom”
- Martin Doyle, The Irish Times“Its appeal is sharp social observation, intimate betrayals and the uneasy pleasure of watching familiar lives crack open.”
- Sarah Gill, Image“A sharply told tale of love, desire and the cost of what might have been.”
- Catherine Jarvie, Marie Claire
Author: Sarah Gilmartin
Genres: Literary Fiction
A glance between them can still conjure their younger selves: dancing beneath pulsing lights, the sharp taste of salt after swims in Dublin Bay.
Two decades on, life feels smaller. Dylan, once a rugby star, is stranded on the sofa, cared for by his wife Rachel. Across town, Stevie and Ben's relationship has settled into weary routine.
Then, after countless auditions, Ben lands a role in Pinter's Betrayal. As rehearsals unfold, the play's shifting allegiances seep into reality, reviving old jealousies and awakening sudden longings, as each must reckon with how far they're willing to go in pursuit of desire.
Wry, sexy and deftly observed, Little Vanities is a novel about the dangerous thrill of stepping outside the roles we've been given - and the distance between the lives we imagine and the ones we live.
Featured in Image 26 books to look forward to in 2026, The Irish Times The best fiction of 2026 to look forward to and Summer reading hitlist, The Journal 16 Irish books to watch out for in 2026, The Times as well as podcasts RTE One, Life in Pages, and A Pair of Bookends.
“Gilmartin is a natural writer: she gives us terrific, complex characters and strong themes, in a prose that is fluent and charged with insight.”
- Anne Enright, author of The Wren, The Wren“A really wonderful storyteller.”
- Joseph O’Connor, author of Star of the Sea“Gilmartin has a forensic eye for the little moments and mumbled asides. . . She writes sharply and cleanly but always with a degree of compassion.”
- Jan Carson, author of The Raptures“Sarah Gilmartin writes so well about failure and disappointment, the curdling of youthful optimism. And her skills as a playwright allow her set pieces to unfold as if on stage with electrifying effect — there are dramas within dramas here and the unravelling is exhilarating when it comes”
- Clare Chambers“Sarah Gilmartin writes about relationships with great precision and insight. Her subject is agency - how ineptly we use it when we're young, how imperceptibly we lose it as youth recedes. Her characters find themselves trapped by their life choices and reckoning with the cost of overturning them. This is a scrupulous and elegant novel about the realities of adulthood”
- Kathleen MacMahon“In Little Vanities […], dramatic turning points are not in short supply: the novel is bookended by a fraught game of poker and a catastrophic children’s birthday party.”
- Miriam Balanescu, Financial Times“From the very first page, we get friendship, lies, recrimination, resentment, jealousy, betrayal and sex, bidden and forbidden. In other words, all the good stuff. […] In all three of her novels, Gilmartin excels at complex and authentic characters.”
- Edel Coffey, The Irish Times“It’s a midlife-crisis novel, full of sharp wit and sharper wisdom”
- Martin Doyle, The Irish Times“Its appeal is sharp social observation, intimate betrayals and the uneasy pleasure of watching familiar lives crack open.”
- Sarah Gill, Image“A sharply told tale of love, desire and the cost of what might have been.”
- Catherine Jarvie, Marie Claire
UK Publisher
Pushkin Press
Publication Date
May 21st, 2026
