On Thursday 15^th June, we launched of The Cruelty Men by Emer Martin in Hodges Figgis. She was introduced by the poet Michael O’Loughlin who suggested her novel could have been called The Great Irish Novel, such is its depth and breadth. Emer spoke about the 7 year long process of writing this book. She conducted pain-staking research after the idea of the book was formed following the release of both the Ryan and Murphy Reports. Emer concluded by reading three extracts from The Cruelty Men, ending with a powerful passage on the state of our nation,

‘Under the toll roads that they built to slice through a Neolithic  world they refused to understand. Under the tribunals, the confessions, the recessions, the depressions. The brown bags of money under tables. Under the heroin, the flats, the dirty canals, the coke come-downs, the cathedral-like shopping centres, the developers, the bankers, the crap ugly buildings standing empty, the Great Ongar, the unlandscaped blank green spaces in the sprawling housing estates built on floodplains, the unsignposted roundabouts. Which way now?  Which way now?’

The Cruelty Men is out now.