Snapshots

‘Nothing is fair in love and war. When has it ever been? But make sure you win. That is, after all, what everybody wants. I thought that when I fell in love I’d leave a lot of death behind. But love isn’t pure and shiny. It doesn’t make you happy. Love is war.’ ‘Love is war’ – and never more so than when you’re young, gay, and trapped ‘between the cracks of society’ in troubled ceasefire Crossmaglen. Marking the debut of a stunning new voice in contemporary fiction, Snapshots tells the story of Oisin Grant’s struggles to assert the truth of his emotional and sexual identity against the backdrop of a land still haunted by the shadow of a gunman and still bound by the compassionless shackles of a conservative Catholicism. Bold, frank and iconoclastic, Snapshots imaginatively crosses and subverts political and personal borders. Erotic obsession, teenage friendships, wild student parties, art, family strife, grief and republican violence are just some of the potent elements in a novel that shatters sexual and stylistic convention to probe to the heart of what it means to simply be yourself in a world where everybody wants you to be something you’re not. Tender, angry, humerous, and beautifully realized, this audacious first novel perfectly captures the pain of young adult relationships.