The Longway Round
Set over a handful of nights in Dublin, The Long Way Round follows a loose chain of lives brushing against one another in ways that seem incidental-until they aren't. A council decision made in daylight bleeds into the city after dark; a night of excess leaves a quieter, more corrosive mark; a moment of restraint or violence passes its weight on to someone else, already unsteady.
Each chapter centres on a different character, each circling a private flaw they refuse to name, yet cannot escape. They are linked by shared history, half-remembered encounters, and the city itself-a place where class, faith, addiction, and silence shape what is allowed to happen and who is left to carry the cost. Harm is rarely deliberate, but it is never accidental.
Threading through the book is a quiet, watchful presence: a man who appears briefly in each life, unremarkable and easily overlooked, offering nothing more than an ordinary remark at the wrong moment. Only in hindsight does his presence begin to feel deliberate, his understanding unsettling.
Gritty, intimate, and unsparing, The Long Way Round is a novella about how damage moves-through systems, through friendships, through nights that get away from you-and how easily people convince themselves they are untouched by the consequences. It asks what it means to live clean in a city built on compromise, and how far responsibility can travel before anyone claims it.
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