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Elaine Feeney is an acclaimed novelist and poet from the West of Ireland. Her debut novel, As You Were, was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Irish Novel of the Year Award, and won the Kate O'Brien Award, the McKitterick Prize and the Dalkey Festival Emerging Writer Award. How to Build a Boat was also shortlisted for Irish Novel of the Year, longlisted for the Booker Prize, and was a New Yorker Best Book of the Year. With her third novel, Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way, Feeney was shortlisted again for Irish Novel of the Year and won the Library Association of Ireland Author of the Year. Feeney has published the poetry collections Where's Katie?, The Radio Was Gospel, Rise and All the Good Things You Deserve, and lectures at the University of Galway.
One of Ireland’s shining literary stars...an energetic and vivid voice' * The Times * Feeney’s astute lyricism makes for a marvellously engaging story * Mail on Sunday * A haunting powerful page turner of a novel that will have you in its thrall from first to last page -- Gabriel Byrne One of Irish literature's most gifted and persuasive storytellers. -- Sinéad Gleeson An uncanny understanding of the workings of the human heart. I loved this book. -- Louise Kennedy This book touched my soul ... A perfect depiction of the complicated relationships we have with ourselves and our histories. -- Katriona O'Sullivan Lulls the reader with its lyrical beauty, then slowly devastates with its raw passion and pain ... Shocking, intelligent and full of humanity, this is a story for our times. -- Mary Costello A very strong novel and I was gripped by it throughout -- Alex Clark * RTE Radio * Hugely powerful ...likely one of the most original you'll read this year -- Daily Mail Expertly balances light and darkness, in a story that grips and engages... Sizzling, electric ... charged with humour and anger, reinvigorating and unexpected ...I loved it so -- Jenny Mustard Superb... Feeney examines everything from intergenerational trauma and violence to tradwives, with insight, wit and compassion * Irish Times, Summer Reads * The pull of home feels as irresistible as it is destabilising, forcing a confrontation with unspeakable truths... With a poet's eye, Feeney reflects on inherited trauma as well as today's 'trad wife' phenomenon -- Observer An ambitious, thoughtful, nicely layered book * Irish Times * One of the finest writers of her generation ... Feeney will break your heart with her characters but she will also lovingly put it back together again. -- Edel Coffey Feeney's warmth, compassion and bravery on the page... Her writing is so natural...that it seems at times miraculous. -- Lisa McInerney This is a clear-eyed and deep-hearted calibration of accumulating trauma, which Feeney skillfully conveys the scope and heft of while considering what it might take to halt it in its devastating tracks. She has the novelist's instinct of wanting to get to the bottom of painful situations, yet she is also a first-class poet who knows that painful situations are often fathomless and ineffable. What we get then is a driven, tenacious, and probing narrative, made up of deeply expressive sentences that bristle and ache. Curious, sensitive, and unfeignedly visceral, Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way packs an intellectual and emotional punch as it asks that most difficult of questions – What now? -- Claire-Louise Bennett A true gift to Irish literature... Feeney's work has the power to articulate, with such great empathy, the truths of our country that were drowned in cultural silence -- Helen Cullen * Irish Times Books of the Year * Elaine Feeney is a force to be reckoned with. Let Me Go Mad In My Own Way was one of the most talked-about books of 2025, and it deserves every bit of praise and then some... Let Me Go Mad In My Own Way is a masterpiece, and you're seriously missing out if you've not read it yet * Her.ie Books of the Year * Feeney has created a brilliant metaphor in the O’Connor family home… It’s a hugely satisfying, sophisticated structure * Guardian * A strong story that packs an emotional punch ... In presenting both a political and personal history, Feeney delivers a moving meditation on enforced female roles in Irish society both past and present, the heavy pall of grief and the unceasing encroachment of the past into the present * Irish Independent * This book sucked me in completely... Feeney’s writing is lyrical, real, and powerful... I will be dipping into this book again and again * Irish Examiner Books of the Year * Astonishing ... A book about how women hold power and space and how the truths passed down by women from generation to generation create a shadow history that stands as a corrective to received narratives. -- Jessica Traynor An emotionally layered novel about memory, grief and resilience -- Image Magazine I absolutely loved this novel - a story of lost love and longing that tears open to reveal a whole history of violence, told with the effortless intelligence and extraordinary compassion. -- Rosie Price, author of THE ORANGE ROOM A beautiful digressive trip through modern life, and a far-wider-reaching, wildly ambitious vision of what it means to be Irish and a person right now. -- Roisin Kiberd A startling and original novel loaded with insight on the long reach of traumas both personal and political. -- Sarah Gilmartin Conveyed with lyricism and longing. * Observer, *Books to Look Out For 2025* * Beautifully written ... Devastating, true and timely -- Zöe Venditozzi A powerful, poignant book * Economist, *The Best Books of the Year So far* *
