Excerpt from The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac by Louise Kennedy, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The photograph is an instant Polaroid. Audrey takes it and waves it in the air, watching them, watching her child pressing against a man who isn't her father, trying to mesmerize him with a rendition of "Trust in Me." Audrey gave up her job in Mullen & Kilcoyne Solicitors after Shona was born. She was only working to get her out of the house, she told anyone who asked. Matt Kilcoyne Bachelor of Law is engaged to a twenty-four-year-old emergency nurse from Longford. It has been almost three years, yet some days the loss of him weighs so heavy on her she can scarcely breathe.

2016
Audrey is holding up a glass of champagne. Her navy cashmere cardigan is flattering to the jaundiced tint of her skin, the white hair that has begun to fur her scalp since they stopped her treatment. Shona says she looks like Jamie Lee Curtis, who Marty has never heard of. Lorcan is holding Amber Mae, who is two, dark-haired and earnest like her mother. Shona looks tired, her pregnant belly only a little fuller than her mother's distended abdomen. Marty is beside Audrey, his arm stretched out behind her, close but not touching. Rory left for New Zealand three days ago. He has split up from the English girl, who won't give him access to their son.

This photo is Shona's favorite. She is going to put it in the Mass leaflet. She wants the funeral to be a celebration of her mother's life. Shona has planned a party for afterward, a buffet with tables in the garden and large prints of family photos around the house. Marty would settle for a meal in the hotel, but doesn't say so. The last few years at Rockview have been almost happy. Like visiting some other couple, Shona has told Lorcan. They'll send Audrey off from here.

1973
Audrey is behind her mother, on a slab of rock. She is wearing a white halter-neck dress and has tied a navy-andwhite-striped scarf around her hair. She is holding sunglasses in her right hand and looking at the camera. Not smiling, just looking. Marty is out of the frame to the right. He goes to Gibraltar at high tide twice a week to bathe in the tidal pool the council constructed in 1951; the houses on his street were built without bathrooms. He has taken off his shirt and is aware of the ruddy skin that rings his neck and forearms, the startling pale of his torso. He is close enough to see that Audrey has a black bubbly mole just under her left shoulder blade, raised and horny, like a wood louse. He wonders what would happen if he ran his finger across it, if it would yield to his touch or stay raised. The color in the photo has both faded and brightened to give everything a tint you never saw then or since. Marty can confirm that the mole stayed hard when you pressed it, though. And that, in the early days, Audrey Lynch had quite liked the feel of his fingers on her back.

From THE END OF THE WORLD IS A CUL DE SAC by Louise Kennedy, published by Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2023 by Louise Kennedy