A Good Enough Mother

Two women meet in a Dublin café on a winter afternoon – an encounter that will change both their lives forever.

Tess has no idea who this woman Maeve is, or why she has approached her like this, out of the blue. She says that she has important information about Tess’s younger son, Luke, and she insists that Tess needs to listen.

As Maeve’s story unfolds, Tess has the strangest feeling that she knows her from somewhere – but she can’t locate her in any of her memories. As the evening darkens and the café around them seems to grow still, Tess listens in growing distress. The safety of the life and family she has created begins to come apart at the seams.

The fractured lives of mothers and children are woven together in this multi-layered narrative, reminiscent of the creation of a patchwork quilt.

A Good Enough Mother, winner of the inaugural European Rapallo Prize for Fiction 2023, is already a bestseller in Italy.