Catchlights, the brilliant debut novel by author Niamh Prior, has been shortlisted for this year’s John McGahern Prize.

The University of Liverpool’s Institute of Irish Studies awards the prize for the best debut novel or short story collection by an Irish writer or writer resident in Ireland. Of Catchlights, the shortlisting committee said:

“Niamh Prior’s Catchlights, though marketed as a novel, is closer to a collection of short stories working as a series of episodes which have shared characters and narrative developments. The connections between stories are inventive and Prior is bold in deploying supernature alongside nature to build her scenes and characters. Well written and meticulously constructed and connected throughout, it is only as the book unfolds that the reader begins to see an overall, unsettling pattern as characters recur and locations shift and change over decades.”

You can read more about the prize and this year’s three-book shortlist here.

Praised by novelist Liz Nugent for its “ingenious plotting and intelligent structuring”, Catchlights sets the innocence of childhood against the violence of adulthood, the joys of a passion against the horrors of an obsession, and the reality of death against the magic of life…

An Irish vagrant with a strange ability wanders Kew Gardens. She knows that the fine weather is going to break and the impending rain casts her mind back to a riverbank where a shady fisherman once asked for her help.

The same fisherman, years later, runs into a childhood friend and becomes intrigued by his wife. She in turn is charmed by his boldness and his confidence. One day she goes out for a walk and never returns.

In another time, in another place, a photographer notices two ghostly figures – of a man and a woman – on pictures developed from his vintage lens. The images become clearer with each roll of film, but his dogged investigation of the mystery could cost him dearly.

So spool out the lives in Catchlights: the past contains the present and future; shallow and deep acts of cruelty, love, selfishness and kindness reverberate for years.

Catchlights is out now. Grab your copy here. or, better, via your local bookshop or Bookshop.org.