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A Beautiful Loan

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A Beautiful Loan

By: Mary Costello
Narrated by: Caitríona Ní Mhurchú
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My name is Anna, and for some time now, I have been trying to account for certain events in my life – my adult life, that is – which, from this vantage point of forty-five years, I often find baffling . . .
In 1985 Dublin, nineteen-year-old Anna Hughes is in thrall to Peter Gallagher, an older, worldly man. Anna is new to the city, introverted and naïve, and Peter’s experience, wide circle of friends and thirst for adventure captivate her. Her obsessive longing for him leads to marriage and, eventually, a crushing betrayal.

As Anna’s life becomes less predictable, she uncovers deeper layers of herself. Her journey gives an intimate portrait of a woman embracing herself as she is, and claiming the life she yearns for. Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological
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Critic reviews

An exceptional, compulsive novel of love, loss and courage. Told in poetic, clear-eyed prose, A Beautiful Loan is heart-breaking but unsentimental, and easily Costello's best work yet (SINEAD GLEESON)
Mary Costello is a writer of a rare and exquisite sensitivity - intimate, piercing, death-haunted - with sentences that can turn on a pin into vastness (PAUL LYNCH)
A Beautiful Loan is like a beautiful piece of music: true, pure, profound. Anna's quest, in mid-life, to understand herself and the forces that have shaped her thus far, moves and compels. The spirit of Camus, that humane existentialist, hovers over the novel like hope. I am filled with admiration for Mary Costello (CLAIRE MESSUD, author of 'This Strange Eventful History')
Mary Costello's A Beautiful Loan creates a gripping and unsparing portrait of Anna Hughes, whose longing to find 'safety and oneness,' and to submit to love, deepens as both inner and outer worlds close in. This unsettling novel opened before me like a Rorschach test, troubling all my interpretations (MADELEINE THIEN, author of 'The Book of Records')
This beautiful book has a hurrying heartbeat like a drum, hurrying us toward something we can't bear to learn. Mary Costello's writing is rich in knowing, in yearning, in grief, in a deep understanding of the heart (ROXANNA ROBINSON, author of 'Leaving')
Praise for Mary Costello: Costello's writing has the kind of urgency that the great problems demand (ANNE ENRIGHT)
I read Academy Street cover to cover in one night, unable to stop . . . [It] brings to mind the elegance of Colm Toibin and the insight of Alice Munro (MAGGIE O'FARRELL)
Clear-eyed and provocative, bruised and bruising . . . a writer at the very top of her game (EIMEAR McBRIDE)
With extraordinary devotion, Mary Costello brings to life a woman who would otherwise have faded into oblivion (J.M. COETZEE)
It is rare that a writer of fiction can evoke such depth of feeling and visceral/moral revulsion as Mary Costello (JOYCE CAROL OATES)
All stars
Most relevant
Any burb that references Jungian theory/therapy and individuation captures my interest immediately. This did not dissapoint...the protaginst couagely faces her shadow marked by a journey of social, cultural conditioning, male domination, trauma, betrayal and realises that a healed psychic doesn't need permission to exist.

Discernment is a function of Consciousness

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The story of an Irish woman and her love of literature and Jungian theory which accompany her through 2 devastating relationships. The writing is skilful and immensely insightful. No easy answers here, but revelations that ring resoundingly true

Insightful and compelling

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I looked forward to listening to this book every day. I could identify with this character. The narration was excellent and the story is excellent too. I’ll listen to this book again.

Am glad I chose this book to listen to

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