The Home Scar

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

From the Women's Prize longlisted author of Nothing But Blue Sky

On opposite sides of the world, half-siblings Cassie and Christo have built their lives around work, intent on ignoring their painful past.

When a dramatic storm in Galway hits the headlines, they're drawn back there to revisit a glorious childhood summer, the last before their mother died. But their journey uncovers memories of a far less happy summer - one that had tragic consequences.

Confronted with the havoc their mother left in her wake, Cassie and Christo are forced to face their past and - ready or not - to deal with the messy tangle of parental love and neglect that shaped them.

The Home Scar is a luminous and precise story about the inheritance of loss and the possibility of finally making peace with it.

"MacMahon writes with such beautiful simplicity, conjuring real and complex people straight off the page ... subtle and authentic" - Claire Fuller

©2023 Kathleen MacMahon (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

A powerful story about legacy and loss and the possibility of reconciliation

Irish Times

Her beautifully simple style belies psychological complexity . . . and her tone is wryly accepting

Big Issue

Quiet and bleakly beautiful . . . like the siblings and Ireland, it will leave a permanent mark on those who venture into its depths

Buzz

Picks at the wounds only a mother can inflict . . . ambitious . . . intricate

Sunday Independent

An exceptional novel about a brother and sister returning to the west of Ireland and to a summer of their past.

Sunday Independent

MacMahon writes with such beautiful simplicity, conjuring real and complex people straight off the page . . . subtle and authentic

Claire Fuller

Thoughtful, understated . . . it has a quiet power

Irish Independent

Wonderful

RTÉ

A gorgeous story of sibling love. It reads like a psychological adventure story into memory

Louise Nealon

A spell-binding story of inherited grief and the unbreakable bond between siblings as they unpick memories of their shared past . . . [MacMahon’s] characters feel authentic and relatable for all their flaws

Aingeala Flannery

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