Trapped between a controlling partner and a housing system in crisis, a mother in Dublin struggles to protect her children and herself

About a quarter of the way through Roisín O’Donnell’s unbearably tense debut novel, the protagonist finds herself in the foyer of a Dublin hotel. She picks up a brochure, which advises her to “escape the pressures of everyday life at the Hotel Eden”; the problem is that Ciara and her two young daughters are not trying to escape everyday stresses, but Ciara’s coercive and domineering husband – and crucially, this time they are trying to stay away for good.

Ireland’s housing crisis means there is nowhere, physically, for them to go. Ciara’s family are based in the UK and Ryan has put a block on the girls’ passports, while his controlling ways have cut Ciara off from all her friends. She is also completely financially dependent on him. What follows, then, is a nightmarish attempt to navigate the housing system – a series of cramped waiting rooms and complex forms and unanswered phone calls, which could be described as Kafkaesque, except Josef K didn’t also have to keep a two- and a four-year-old fed, washed and entertained while schlepping between dead-end court hearings.