Pure Gold

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What to expect

‘Ireland produces writers the way some countries produce footballers, and the latest is John Patrick McHugh’ Sunday Times

‘One of the most exciting writers working in Ireland today’ SALLY ROONEY, author of Normal People

On an island off Ireland’s west coast strange things are afoot: two teenage boys set fires while their worlds fall apart, a couple drive out to the hills in a last-ditch effort to save their marriage, a widow seeks a stranger’s help to bury her grief and a horse crashes a house party. Adrift in the treacherous waters of small-town boredom, the residents reach out with love and cruelty, desperation and hope, in their pursuit of connection.

Pure Gold is a bitterly funny, surprising and profoundly moving short story collection that crackles with the thrilling energy of a bold new literary voice, John Patrick McHugh.

‘Full of stylish brio’ Colin Barrett, author of Young Skins

‘Hilarious, shocking, and disturbingly well-observed’ Vanity Fair

‘Searing … John Patrick McHugh joins an illustrious generation of talented writers’ Irish Times

‘Savagely funny’ Nicole Flattery, author of Show Them a Good Time

‘Refreshing and ambitious’ Lisa McInerney, author of The Blood Miracles

Critics Review

  • ‘This astonishing collection of stories draws the reader into a world at once familiar and deliciously strange … John Patrick McHugh is one of the most exciting writers working in Ireland today’ Sally Rooney, author of Normal People

    ‘A remarkable, rare and truly brilliant collection’ Megan Nolan, author of Acts of Desperation

    ‘Ireland produces writers the way some countries produce footballers, and the latest is John Patrick McHugh’ Sunday Times

    ‘This is a terrific collection. The stories are dark, funny, honest and engrossing’ Roddy Doyle, author of Love

    ‘Refreshing and ambitious … stories full of heart and balls and mischief’ Lisa McInerney, author of The Blood Miracles

    ‘McHugh’s stories are full of stylish brio, headlong with energy, and pulse with real feeling and depth. He is a young writer forging a fresh and intense new path through the landscape of Irish letters’ Colin Barrett, author of Young Skins

    ‘McHugh writes very tenderly about people, and very vibrantly about place. Pure Gold describes the dull lives of a splendid island, in prose that is always splendid and never dull’ Sara Baume, author of A Line Made By Walking

    ‘Sharp, savage, feral stories. Pure Gold is utterly engrossing and unafraid. From the broken world of masculinity and prejudice, John Patrick McHugh has wrought a precious, beautiful alchemy’ Sean Hewitt, author of Tongues of Fire

    ‘Emotionally intelligent and savagely funny … Pure Gold is a striking literary debut’ Nicole Flattery, author of Show Them A Good Time

    ‘John Patrick McHugh is a wildly ambitious craftsman, and such a thrilling writer of sentences’ Danny Denton, author of The Earlie King & the Kid in Yellow

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