A Sixpenny Song - Tapa blanda

PRAISE FOR JENNIFER JOHNSTON: Masterly...her books bring to mind other Irish craftsmen such as William Trevor and the late Josephine Hart (Daily Express)

A brilliant storyteller (Literary Review)

Roddy Doyle called Johnston the best writer in Ireland. Mesmerising, powerful fiction (Red)

A bittersweet demonstration of the impossibility of love... shot through with a luminous magic (John Walsh Independent)

Masterly (Penelope Lively The Sunday Times)

'[Johnston's] novels display a surface smallness that belies their immense depths. She is a storyteller of truth and its consequences, and her books are deep and worthwhile considerations of the human condition... A Sixpenny Song is a truly moving novel evidencing beyond all reasonable doubt, if any such proof were required, not only that the fire has yet to burn out but that Miss Johnston, at 83 years old, remains at the very top of her game' (Irish Examiner)

Johnston is noted for her brevity, the pared-back quality of her writing (Irish Times)

'The Costa prizewinner and Booker-shortlisted Johnston knows how to tell a story succinctly...[she writes with] the deceptive ease of a skilled craftswoman...further proof of her skill as a writer' (Irish Independent)

'[A] beautifully written novella... so well-written, so deeply imagined, that the reader will find delight even in the encircling gloom' (Scotsman)

Alluring and powerful (The Press Association)

From Costa prizewinning and Booker-shorlisted Jennifer Johnston comes a beautifully crafted, alluring tale of family and secrets. Not every death is a tragedy. Not every silver lining is intact. Annie's father is dead. She isn't sorry. A rich and domineering man, he was always more passionate about money than the happiness of his wife and child. And when his lovely, fragile wife Jude died in mysterious circumstances when Annie was still very young, her father sent her to school in England, and tried to ensure that Jude was never mentioned again. Now, at last, his days of tyranny are over. And so Annie leaves London and goes back to Dublin, to the house in which he lived and her mother died, where she makes the first of several startling discoveries: he has left her the house she hated. Now, just when she thought she was free of him, she is expected to make a new life in Ireland, and live as he would have wished. Does she dare to defy him one more time? And who will be able to tell her the truth about her mother's life, and death, before she has to decide?