Louise Kennedy
At a glance
A woman is haunted by the unsettled boy who befriended her as an outcast teenager, long after he drifts out of reach.
In 1980s Ireland, Róisín and Red bond as only two precocious and disaffected teenagers can. Soon he is privy to the secret source of her shame and anger: the father who’s abandoned her and her mother to their damp house and never-ending strife. But what does Róisín know about why Red avoids going home to his own posh parents and house—the house he soon flees forever?
When a Christmas visit to her father reveals the devastating truth of his new life in London, Róisín tracks down Red and moves into his Pimlico squat. But the path he is now on is a disturbing one, and gradually they drift apart. And yet the great, never-consummated passion of her youth remains a visitation upon the years that follow. Will Róisín ever stop longing for Red? Will she ever learn to let someone else love her—or learn to love herself?
Stations is a gorgeous, wrenching novel about the terrible—and sometimes redemptive—power with which the past hovers over the present.
“Louise Kennedy captures what it feels like to love someone fiercely without a label for it, to spend years trying to let anyone love you the way you loved them, and the complicated feelings about the parents who shaped you (and let you down). Queerness has its own version of all of this–the friends who come in and out of your life, the people who change you forever, the shame you carry until you learn to put it down. You don’t have to be queer to read it, but if you are, you’ll recognize every ache.”
- Jason Blitman, Gays Reading Podcast
"Captures with fino-dry wit the path of would-be lovers … [Kennedy] is particularly good at implying the psychology of her characters - especially the parts they fail to understand themselves... [and] remembering, and recreating, the teeming emotional complexities of youth."
- Financial Times
"Blisteringly good… [Kennedy’s] characters are messy, flawed, often shatteringly self-destructive but, mapped with her fierce compassion, they march straight off the page … Stations is at its heart a love story, a furious, tender, potty-mouthed paean to loyalty and generosity of spirit."
- The Guardian
It was the first time she had spoken to a boy. Red Camelin, a combat jacket over his school jumper, kicking his heels against the wall he was sitting on behind the County Council offices. Watching her, his head cocked as if she had said something funny.
Róisín began digging in the pockets of her gaberdine. Here you go, she said, thrusting the letter at him.
He performed a twirly gesture with his fingers, an expression of exaggerated concentration on his face. Making her wait. Then he plucked the envelope from her hand with a Merci that sounded— deliberately?—like mercy, patting the capping on the wall as if it was a sofa. Have a seat, he said.
She hadn’t expected conversation, but it would be easier to sit next to him than endure his gaze for another second. She hopped up beside him.
Any smokes? he said, twisting on his arse to look at her again.
She offered him a Consulate from a squashed packet.
They’re for pregnant women. Are you with child?
Yeah, I’m expecting triplets.
He lit them both up, sniggering. Minty fresh, he said, shooting smoke out through his nostrils.
She dragged hard, glad to have something to do with her hands.
So, Róisín McCaffrey. Why, out of all the girls in Saint Attracta’s College, have you been elected go-between?
She did not know what he was getting at. Or maybe she did, and didn’t like it. There were popular girls and invisible girls; Róisín was actively unpopular. She slid into a standing position, pebbledash scrabbing her thighs.
Where are you off to? he said.
Addiction, domestic abuse, mentions of CSA, sexual assault, abortion.
Stations is not a queer story. But if you’ve ever been young and queer, you’re going to feel a kinship with Louise Kennedy’s second novel.
Remember being a teenager and feeling like the most misunderstood person alive? Insecure, self-absorbed, certain no one had ever felt this much before you? Then someone walks into your life, and suddenly the world makes sense. They get your taste in music, your sense of humor, the weird little corners of your brain. They shape who you become, even if you don’t realize it until years later. And then, somehow, you lose them. Not necessarily in a dramatic break, but in the slow drift that happens when two people grow in different directions.
Louise Kennedy captures what it feels like to love someone fiercely without a label for it, to spend years trying to let anyone love you the way you loved them, and the complicated feelings about the parents who shaped you (and let you down). Queerness has its own version of all of this–the friends who come in and out of your life, the people who change you forever, the shame you carry until you learn to put it down. You don’t have to be queer to read it, but if you are, you’ll recognize every ache.
With many deliciously Irish-tastic uses of the c-word and a bunch of sex, Stations is surprisingly funny, filthy, angsty, and tender, and that is why Stations earns The Nod™️ by Gays Reading.
