Louise Kennedy Returns with Stations, a Worthy Successor to Trespasses

Louise Kennedy's second novel, Stations, arrives as a superb follow-up to Trespasses, the 2022 debut that became an international bestseller and was translated into more than 20 languages.

Kennedy's first novel earned rare double success: critics received it rapturously and readers around the world adored it. The book told a story of forbidden love set during the Troubles in 1970s Belfast. It was shortlisted for the 2023 Women's Prize and won debut fiction of the year at the British Book Awards.

A four-part television adaptation starring Gillian Anderson aired last autumn on Channel 4, extending the novel's reach further still.

The publishing world labelled Kennedy an overnight success. The label fits badly. Before Trespasses, Kennedy had worked for 30 years as a professional chef, and much was made of that career change in coverage of her breakthrough. But she had also been writing short stories for a decade, to considerable acclaim. Her first collection, The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac, appeared in 2021.

That collection contains the seed of Stations. Included in it was Belladonna, a story about Róisín, a young girl from Belfast who moves south with her mother. Ostracised by her new classmates, Róisín becomes friendly with the couple who live across the road. Like Briony Tallis in Ian McEwan's Atonement, the prickly and precociously bright Róisín misreads the dynamic of her neighbours' marriage, with disastrous effect.

Stations continues Kennedy's preoccupation with broken hearts and broken people. The new tale moves from the Troubles of 1970s Northern Ireland to an unforgiving London of squats and payphones — a cityscape of precarity and improvised shelter, far from the Belfast of her debut.

The trajectory from Belladonna to Stations shows Kennedy building a body of work rather than chasing a single hit. The misread marriage, the child narrator who gets things catastrophically wrong, the displacement from Belfast: these motifs carry across her stories and novels, refined each time.

For readers who came to Kennedy through the Channel 4 adaptation or the bestseller lists, Stations offers the next test: whether the author of Trespasses can sustain her command of troubled love and Northern Irish memory beyond the debut. Early indications, gathered from the novel's critical reception, suggest she can.