We’ll Sing Blackbird
‘Artful and wry, these fresh poems surprise by making a big
picture out of miniatures ... O’Connor has an eye for what Elizabeth Bishop
called the “always-more-successful surrealism of everyday life”’
John
McAuliffe, The Irish Times
‘A delicate, polished gem ... The poet’s voice is nimble,
light, assured.’
Doireann Ní Ghríofa, The Stinging Fly
‘I have been impressed and charmed in equal measure by
We’ll Sing Blackbird. Quite beautiful.’
Scott Pack
Read
The Lakes, highly commended by the Forward Prizes for Poetry
Watch a video of her poem Dear Taxidermist, filmed by Finn
Keenan,
here.
Click on the link below to purchase a copy of
We’ll Sing Blackbird
Alternatively, you can send a cheque for €12 made
payable to ‘The Moth Magazine Ltd’ to: Ardan Grange, Milltown,
Belturbet, Cavan, Co. Cavan, Ireland H14 K768
He Is Mine and I Have No Other
‘He Is Mine And I Have No Other is a book of secrets, and it burns
with the sadness and starkness particular to lives forced into secrecy and
silence. And yet there is, too, in this story a lucid and beautiful happiness,
fragile though it may be; the happiness of being young, and in love, and of
finding that love returned. Rebecca O'Connor captures vividly the small
triumphs and catastrophes of being a teenage girl in rural Ireland, but in the
further darkness to which she reaches is a truth for all generations.’ Belinda
McKeon
‘I adored He is Mine and I Have No Other . . . Amazing,
heartbreaking, brilliantly done.’ Donal Ryan
‘My heart broke a little bit for Lani and Leon. He Is Mine and I Have
No Other vividly calls up the atmosphere of small-town life, I could
positively feel the damp mistiness of it on my skin. Eerie, tender and
wonderful.’ Sophie Mackintosh
‘God this book is brilliant. It sends you, helter-skelter, back to life as a
fifteen-year-old and all the intensity of that age. A love story set against an
undercurrent of untold tragedy. Vivid and utterly compelling, this book had me
torn between racing on and stopping to marvel at beautifully crafted
lines,’ Jess Kidd
‘A haunting novel that cuts right into the delicate and dangerous world of the
adolescent. Sometimes frightening, often funny, but never a word less than a
true work of art.’ Christine Dwyer Hickey
‘He Is Mine and I Have No Other takes the reader on a journey
through a teenage girl’s heart at a time when she feels all the world’s drama
is centred there, while her life’s biggest challenge is to learn how to
recognise the pain of others. O'Connor delivers a story that is both heartfelt
and daring.’ Sjón
‘This is a work of slim elegant beauty. A poetic meditation on love and desire,
with a truly astonishing conclusion. I loved reading it. With this
novel Rebecca O’Connor has arrived fully mature, as an extraordinary
storyteller who will delight the reader.’ Michael Harding
‘It is a truly wonderful book. I so admire the sheer scale of its historical
depth and its ambition, ambition perfectly realised. Your writing touches
genuine depths of sorrow.’ Frank McGuinness
‘I devoured He Is Mine and I Have No Other in a day,
immediately caught up in O’Connor’s vividly realised world. The intensity of
relationships and shifting loyalties is brilliantly captured as the teenage
protagonist, Lani Devine, wrestles with family life, friendship and first love.
O'Connor perfectly evokes the passion, uncertainties and awkward
misunderstandings of teen love. He Is Mine and I Have No Other is
a great achievement and my only complaint is that I wanted more!’ Ever
Dundas
‘Evocative of Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding and
Maura Laverty’s glorious Never No More, Rebecca O’Connor’s debut
novel is vivid, authentic and compelling and may be the truest depiction of
Irish rural girlhood since Edna O’Brien’s Girl With Green Eyes. For
that it is, and a lot more besides. What a treat it is to be introduced to such
a genuine, compassionately humorous and profoundly tender voice.’ Pat
McCabe
‘Rebecca O’Connor has a rare sense of immanence, of something unseen that draws
us together and pushes at the fabric of the world. She’s got a special
talent.’ Will Cohu
‘Powerful and searing ... O’Connor captures the dread and anticipation
attendant on these teenage rites with great skill and sensitivity ... writes
with genuine grace and fluency’ Sunday Times
‘Captures, with uncanny precision, the sheer ferociousness of teenage
desire . . . An evocative, atmospheric and thought-provoking read’ Sunday
Indendent
‘A heady dive into the vulnerability, passion and recklessness of youth, with
an eye for wry detail, and it luminously evokes the delicacy of teen romance
... a vivid and sensitive first novel, exploring growing pains through the
prism of social change.’ Sydney Morning Herald
‘Quite
brilliant. The most accurate evocation of teenage angst I have ever read’ Irish Examiner
‘Prepare to have your heart well and truly wrenched’ A Life in
Books
‘A tender portrait of adolescence in all its rawness and sensitivity . . . It
is a small, self-contained thing, spare and unembellished in its prose style .
. . This extreme lightness of touch gives He Is Mine and I Have No
Other a certain elegiac grace’ Irish Times
‘A clear and confident voice with ever-surprising descriptive powers’ Irish
Independent
‘A menacing debut’ Daily Mail
‘Charts
significant moments in an adolescent girl’s development with subtlety and
finesse, while at the same time advancing a heartbreaking story of death
and destruction.’ RTE Culture
‘It was delightful to read something purely for pleasure. And a pleasure it
was. He Is Mine and I Have No Other was devoured in just a few
sittings.’ Scott Pack
‘A great summer bildungsroman to indulge in.’ The Wee
Review
‘A remarkable account of adolescent love in the 1990s ... This debut gives us
an author's eye for setting that is absolutely unrivalled.’ Sunday Independent 'Critics'
choice' top-5 fiction titles of 2018
‘Compassionate. . . O’Connor powerfully evokes the heightened reality of two
people navigating their first romance at the most self-conscious and
emotionally chaotic point of their lives.’ Herald
‘A very self-assured novel that’s quietly engaging which deserves to be read by
lots of people.’ O’Reilly Reads
