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A P Watt)

Desire Lines

From the cover

`Eventually she said, "Do you want to come to bed?" and that was that . . . If she thought of her motive, and she had chosen not to, she was doing something wrong to stop herself from doing something even more wrong. This was as far from sleeping with a priest as she could get.'

Clare Murphy has come home to a terrace house in west Belfast to lick her wounds. Her glamorous acting career in London is faltering, and her long-term lover Tim has ditched her for a younger actress with more use theatrical connections.

With time on her hands - acting jobs are hard to come by even in a newly vibrant Belfast - she agrees to help a local drama group led by Lorcan O'Carroll. Father Lorcan O'Carroll, that is.The immediate attraction she feels to the priest is not only strongly sexual but, it appears, disturbingly mutual.

In flight from her emotions yet again, she succumbs to the approaches of Robert, a much younger actor Their 'sheer physical workout' is passionate but brief - or so Clare intends. After all, men have no-strings affairs with younger women all the time and no harm done, surely?

But deep harm has indeed been done, and Clare finds that love - in any of its manifestations - is not a thing to be handled lightly.

Intimate and honest, this compelling first novel from playwright Annie McCartney heralds the debut of an exciting new voice in Irish fiction.