SHORTLISTED FOR THE BETTY TRASK PRIZE

Following the death of her best friend, Erin has to get out of London. Returning home to Belfast, an au pair job provides a partial refuge from her grief and her volatile relationship with her mother. Erin spends late nights at the bar where her childhood friend Declan works. There Erin meets an American academic who is also looking to get lost. Parallel to this she reconnects with an old flame, Mikey. This brings its own web of complications.

With a startlingly fresh and original voice - jarringly funny, cranky, often hungover - Lazy City depicts the strange, meandering aftermath that follows disaster.

"It's also a novel about trauma and its aftermath: again, a common theme today, but done sophisticatedly here, with a quality of thinking rare in a debut . . . Connolly gives Erin a dry, wry voice, and one that's frequently very funny . . . Lazy City exhibits an understanding of the importance of our homeland as the container that shapes us . . . I felt better after reading this book. Connolly is a writer in whom I have faith" - * Daily Telegraph *

"Connolly strikes the by now familiar tone of confusion and melancholy, but with a piercing penetration and observational clarity . . . Profound" - * Guardian *

"It's an elegant, funny book about that least elegant and funny thing: grief" - * Observer *

"A skilful, expressive and subtly subversive debut" - * Irish Times *