SLANT
2nd Edition
Published on 15. May 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
368 pages
978-1-83594-054-9 (ISBN)
Description
'A heartfelt celebration of all kinds of queer love' - Alice Linehan, Gay Community News
A ground-breaking Irish lesbian love story, set across the decades from the 1980s AIDS crisis to the 2015 marriage referendum.
Ro McCarthy, single in her fifties and working a quiet job, is sustained by her love of books and her deep friendships. Although she still doesn't approve of marriage - not even for the straights - she is canvassing for yes in the 2015 marriage equality referendum. But, as the ghosts of her activist past join her on the campaign trail and her eagerness to confront a familiar discrimination turns to obsession and fury, Ro must finally face the long-buried trauma and loss of her youth.
Thirty years earlier, Ro is a young Cork woman living her best life in Boston, undocumented and working multiple jobs, making life-long friends, and falling in love with Jenny. Soon, however, the young gay men who have become Ro's new family - from Ireland and elsewhere - begin to die. Shocked and grieving, she finds purpose in AIDS activism and a community that is loving and living against all odds. In the wake of this macabre heyday which Ro just about survives, her charged entanglement with Jenny will bear witness to the resistance and survival of an invisible generation of warriors.
Slant is a headbutt to the heart, told from within a protective community, that will reveal and celebrate all the kinds of love needed to sustain a life.
A ground-breaking Irish lesbian love story, set across the decades from the 1980s AIDS crisis to the 2015 marriage referendum.
Ro McCarthy, single in her fifties and working a quiet job, is sustained by her love of books and her deep friendships. Although she still doesn't approve of marriage - not even for the straights - she is canvassing for yes in the 2015 marriage equality referendum. But, as the ghosts of her activist past join her on the campaign trail and her eagerness to confront a familiar discrimination turns to obsession and fury, Ro must finally face the long-buried trauma and loss of her youth.
Thirty years earlier, Ro is a young Cork woman living her best life in Boston, undocumented and working multiple jobs, making life-long friends, and falling in love with Jenny. Soon, however, the young gay men who have become Ro's new family - from Ireland and elsewhere - begin to die. Shocked and grieving, she finds purpose in AIDS activism and a community that is loving and living against all odds. In the wake of this macabre heyday which Ro just about survives, her charged entanglement with Jenny will bear witness to the resistance and survival of an invisible generation of warriors.
Slant is a headbutt to the heart, told from within a protective community, that will reveal and celebrate all the kinds of love needed to sustain a life.
Reviews / Votes
A heartfelt celebration of all kinds of queer love -- Alice Linehan * Gay Community News * it's love that begins and ends the novel, and the book concludes poetically, coming full circle to when truth again seems to be wearing the clothes of fiction, or perhaps the other way around, or maybe, as the title and Emily Dickenson suggest, something altogether more oblique. -- Ruth McKee * Irish Times * A powerful story, laced with passion, soul, infatuation and love. -- Aisling Arundel * Totally Dublin *More details
Edition
2nd edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Dublin
Ireland
Dimensions
Height: 195 mm
Width: 125 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
270 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-83594-054-9 (9781835940549)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
KATHERINE O'DONNELL was born in Cork and spent her childhood on the naval base at Haulbowline island, attending a two-teacher school. She studied at University College Cork and later Boston College on a Fulbright Scholarship. She worked briefly as a journalist in RTE. Katherine is now Professor of the History of Ideas at UCD's School of Philosophy. She has been an activist for many years, involved in, most notably, the Justice for Magdalenes Campaign and, more generally, with justice issues and the LGBTQ+ community. Katherine practices Buddhism and acupuncture and splits her time between Dublin, Cork and her converted camper van. Slant is her debut novel. -- AKW