Assured ... Murrin’s novel is immaculately crafted, his characterisation beautifully nuanced ... Murrin writes perceptively about love, desire and the limitations placed on women. While the denouement is melodramatic, this is a compelling, compassionate page-turner.
Murrin attends to... the real and heartbreaking lack of agency for women in difficult, unsatisfying marriages in 20th century Ireland. This is what elevates his novel, bringing the lives of his distinctive female characters into high definition ... Murrin switches with remarkable ease between the perspectives, at home in the voice of a bohemian poet as he is a priest or plumber. This fluid narrative style makes for an engrossing read.
Murrin makes a virtue of his story’s architecture by making it a home for a wealth of closely rendered social detail ... Although The Coast Road is entirely invested in its characters... it captures suggestively a specific moment somewhere between Éamon de Valera’s conservatism and the vainglory of the Celtic Tiger era.
Each of the characters is vividly rendered, and Murrin excels at portraying the rippling consequences of small-town gossip and intolerance. This is a marvel.
The wives are the fuller characters in Murrin’s gloomy depiction of a stifling, gossipy, traditional community, whereas the men, Brian excepted, emerge badly and more thinly ... Overstatement detracts from this compassionate depiction of hard times.
