The Amusements

Critics Review

• If you like dark humour, superbly drawn characters, caravan parks, fish suppers and slot machines, The Amusements is what you’ve been waiting for

  Jan Carson

• Brilliant. Dramatic, heartfelt, sometimes shocking and sad

  Irish Examiner

• Unputdownable . . . one of the best novels of the year

  Sunday Independent

• The writing, so true to small-town life, is both shrewd and enlarging. Flannery writes like a grown-up; her flawed, hopeful characters live and grow on the page

  Anne Enright

• Its effortless evocations of the tides and pulls of small-town life are note perfect . . . It’s often very funny, sometimes sad, always authentic and perceptive, and hugely entertaining. Beautiful

  Donal Ryan

• A cracker of a book. Think Kevin Barry crossed with Elizabeth Strout. The writing is that good

  Kathleen Mac Machon

• [The setting of] Tramore is not only a character – it is the main character of The Amusements, with its quotidian dramas and failed epiphanies and the magnetic pull it has over everyone who encounters it, from those on a family holiday, to those who are born, bred and die there. It was a joy to read

  Louise Nealon

• A fascinating portrait of small-town life. A joy to read

  Sunday Independent

• A fresh, funny, fiercely Irish novel about the vagaries of friendship, and Aingeala Flannery – wholly in charge of her lovable, eccentric cast – writes like a dream

  Nuala O'Connor

• A vibrant, evocative debut that brings the exploits of an Irish coastal town brilliantly to life

  Sarah Gilmartin

• A deft collage of a novel. Ambitious and fun . . . a wonderful debut

  Alan McMonagle

• A brilliant book. I loved meeting all these characters, who jumped off the page and stayed in my head. Aingeala Flannery is a real talent

  Róisín Ingle

• The Amusements kept me up half the night. Aingeala Flannery is a brilliant writer. Her sentences crackle with life, energy and devastating insight into the human condition. She writes with a rare combination of compassion and black humour. Her characters live on in my mind like people I have always known

  Lia Mills

• A fantastic debut novel . . . it paints a vivid picture of this seaside town, we were gripped

  Stellar

• [Flannery] skilfully observes life in a small town and roads that are dreamed of but not taken. Characters that have a great sense of longing & yearning to leave this town behind, and yet somehow always get pulled back. A great read!

  Sinéad Moriarty

• As addictive as slot machines and as exhilarating as waltzers. A great sense of place and compelling characters

  Martin Doyle

• [Carries] notes of Donal Ryan and Roddy Doyle for me . . . A nostalgic masterpiece, loaded with possibility and weighed down with reality, guaranteed to be this summer’s must-read

  Waterford News and Star

• Sharp as a vogue tomato slicer, it’s seaside Ireland minus the dreary caravan mentality or sentimentality

  June Caldwell

• If you buy just one novel next month make sure to buy Aingeala Flannery’s debut. Funny, sad and most of all beautifully written

  Eoin Devereux

• A compelling and satisfying read

  Hot Press

• Brilliant

  Irish Daily Mail

• I loved it – so good

  Elaine Feeney

• Glorious

  IMAGE

• Beautiful

  Ryan Tubridy

• Like [William] Trevor, a wry wit permeates Flannery’s storytelling

  Irish Times

• Flannery’s depiction of the sounds, smells and seediness of the typical seaside resort is sharp and vivid

  Sunday Times

• Charming and empathetic . . . Flannery’s immense skill lies in her ability to inhabit such a wide range of characters, stepping into their shoes and capturing the nuance of each voice, each set of hopes and dreams and private, devastating heartaches

  Independent

• THIS BOOK is EVERYTHING. The characters are painfully, beautifully real, the writing is IMPECCABLE. Brutally honest about what we want for ourselves versus what we actually get, I LOVED it

  Marian Keyes

• Blackly funny

  Business Post

• Impossibly compelling

  RTÉ Culture

• My book of the year . . . I loved every page

  Gearóid Farrelly

• Flannery excels at working that counterpoint of dark and light, comedy in the face of tragedy . . . A brilliant debut

  Anglo-Celt

• Quietly beautiful . . . Flannery’s characters are very well drawn, as is her understanding of small-town mores and idle gossip. It’s a book that leaves and impression long after the final page

  Irish Independent

• An amazing story

  Belfast Telegraph