This May, this author of the international bestseller Notes To Self joins Toppings for a talk on her debut novel, Ruth & Pen.
Dublin, 7 October 2019. One day, one city, two women: Ruth and Pen. Neither knows the other, but both are asking the same questions: how to be with others and how, when the world won’t make space for you, to be with yourself?
Ruth’s marriage to Aidan is in crisis. Today she needs to make a choice – to stay or not to stay, to take the risk of reaching out, or to pull up the drawbridge.
For teenage Pen, today is the day the words will flow, and she will speak her truth to Alice, to ask for what she so desperately wants.
RUTH & PEN is the fictional debut from Emilie Pine, author of the international bestseller NOTES TO SELF and Professor of Modern Drama at University College Dublin. Notes to Self won the Butler Literary Award, the Sunday Independent Newcomer of the Year Award, and Book of the Year 2018 at the Irish Book Awards.
Deeply involving, poignant and radiantly intelligent, Ruth & Pen is a portrait of the limits of grief and love, of how we navigate our inner and outer landscapes, and the tender courage demanded by the simple, daily quest of living.