Spill Simmer Falter Wither

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2015**

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**LONGLISTED FOR THE *GUARDIAN* FIRST BOOK AWARD 2015**

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****LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2016

****WINNER OF THE *SUNDAY INDEPENDENT* NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR, IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2015

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*You find me on a Tuesday, on my Tuesday trip to town. A note sellotaped to the inside of the jumble-shop window: COMPASSIONATE & TOLERANT OWNER. A PERSON WITHOUT OTHER PETS & WITHOUT CHILDREN UNDER FOUR.*

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A misfit man finds a misfit dog. Ray, aged fifty-seven, ‘too old for starting over, too young for giving up', and One Eye, a vicious little bugger, smaller than expected, a good ratter. Both are accustomed to being alone, unloved, outcast – but they quickly find in each other a strange companionship of sorts. As spring turns to summer, their relationship grows and intensifies, until a savage act forces them to abandon the precarious life they'd established, and take to the road.

*Spill Simmer Falter Wither* is a wholly different kind of love story: a devastating portrait of loneliness, loss and friendship, and of the scars that are more than skin-deep. Written with tremendous empathy and insight, in lyrical language that surprises and delights, this is an extraordinary and heartbreaking debut by a major new talent.