Award-winning Dublin author Christine Dwyer Hickey talks about the release of her new novel to Gemini McKee
Christine Dwyer Hickey
Our London Lives examines what it’s like to look at one of literature’s most loved cities from the outside. The book pays homage to the quiet desperation of protagonist, Milly, delicately carving decades into a series of afternoons and evenings from 1979, to 2017, where her timeline converges with Pip, and an archaeology of his newly-sober regrets. These two Irish immigrants, a barmaid and a boxer, spend years together — and apart — and all the while, they must keep striving to get by.
As its title promises, the story witnesses lively, lonely London. Christine was initially daunted by the task of tackling it, having little connection to the city and feeling more at home with the Dublin she grew up in — her 2004 novel, Tatty, was made Dublin’s UNESCO One City, One Book in 2020.
