WINNER OF THE KATE O’BRIEN AWARD 2021SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2021SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2020AN OBSERVER BEST DEBUT 2020’Riveting… I was exhilarated reading this’ Roddy DoyleSinead Hynes is a tough, driven, funny young property developer with a terrifying secret. No-one knows it: not her fellow patients in a failing hospital, and certainly not her family. She has confided only in Google and a shiny magpie. But she can’t go on like this, tirelessly trying to outstrip her past and in mortal fear of her future. Across the ward, Margaret Rose is running her chaotic family from her rose-gold Nokia. In the neighbouring bed, Jane, rarely but piercingly lucid, is searching for a decent bra and for someone to listen. Sinead needs them both. As You Were is about intimate histories, institutional failures, the kindness of strangers, and the darkly present past of modern Ireland. It is about women’s stories an