The Leaving

At 15, Cathy Quinn is an intelligent misfit living in 1980s Dublin. As the book opens she discovers that her charming older brother Stevie, who's gay, is falling in love with the one boy in school whom she likes. Over her last two years of school, Cathy struggles with her repressed, unhappy family, coming to terms with her powerful attraction to her best friend Jeanette, and leaving Ireland. "The Leaving" is a realistic yet lyrical look at adolescence and first love.

Above all, the novel offers a wry, raw look at growing up in the conservative, recession-plagued Dublin of the 1980s, when homosexuality was still taboo, and being different was not tolerated.