'My heart broke a little bit for Lani and Leon. He Is Mine and I Have No Other vividly calls up the atmosphere of small-town life. Eerie, tender and wonderful' Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure

Shortlisted for the Kate O'Brien Award

In 1990s small-town Ireland, fifteen-year-old Lani Devine falls in love with Leon Brady, whose mother is buried in the cemetery next to Lani's house. Quiet and strange, Leon is haunted by a brutal family tragedy that has left scars much more than skin-deep. As Lani falls deeper and deeper in love with him, old wounds begin to reopen and start to change the shape of their lives forever.

About the Author

Rebecca O'Connor's first collection of poetry We'll Sing Blackbird was shortlisted for the Shine/Strong Award. Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Spectator, Poetry Review and elsewhere. She was a writer in residence at the Wordsworth Trust, the Centre for British Romanticism and is a recipient of a Geoffrey Dearmer Prize. She is co-founder and publisher of The Moth magazine. She lives in County Cavan, Ireland. He Is Mine and I Have No Other is her first novel.

@RebeccaMoth | themothmagazine.com

Reviews
My heart broke a little bit for Lani and Leon by the end. He Is Mine and I Have No Other vividly calls up the atmosphere of small-town life, I could positively feel the damp mistiness of it on my skin. Eerie, tender and wonderful -- SOPHIE MACKINTOSH, author of THE WATER CURE
Powerful and searing * * Sunday Times * *
I adored He is Mine and I Have No Other . . . Amazing, heartbreaking, brilliantly done -- DONAL RYAN, author of THE SPINNING HEART and ALL WE SHALL KNOW
A tender portrait of adolescence in all its rawness and sensitivity . . . This is both a love story and, in a sense, a ghost story. It is a small, self-contained thing, spare and unembellished in its prose style and . . . This extreme lightness of touch gives He Is Mine and I Have No Other a certain elegiac grace * * Irish Times * *
He Is Mine And I Have No Other is a book of secrets, and it burns with the sadness and starkness particular to lives forced into secrecy and silence. And yet there is, too, in this story a lucid and beautiful happiness, fragile though it may be; the happiness of being young, and in love, and of finding that love returned. Rebecca O'Connor captures vividly the small triumphs and catastrophes of being a teenage girl in rural Ireland, but in the further darkness to which she reaches is a truth for all generations -- BELINDA MCKEON, author of SOLACE and TENDER
Captures, with uncanny precision, the sheer ferociousness of teenage desire . . . An evocative, atmospheric and thought-provoking read * * Irish Independent on Sunday * *
Evocative of Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding and Maura Laverty's glorious, long out of print, Never No More, Rebecca O'Connor's debut novel is vivid, authentic and compelling and may be the truest depiction of Irish rural girlhood since Edna O'Brien's Girl With Green Eyes. For that it is, and a lot more besides. What a treat it is to be introduced to such a genuine, compassionately humorous and profoundly tender voice -- PATRICK McCABE, Booker-shortlisted author of BREAKFAST ON PLUTO and THE BUTCHER BOY
God, this book is brilliant. It sends you, helter-skelter, back to life as a fifteen-year-old and all the intensity of that age. A love story set against an undercurrent of untold tragedy. Vivid and utterly compelling, this book had me torn between racing on and stopping to marvel at beautifully crafted lines -- JESS KIDD, author of HIMSELF and THE HOARDER
Compassionate . . . O'Connor powerfully evokes the heightened reality of two people navigating their first romance at the most self-conscious and emotionally chaotic point of their lives * * Herald * *
I devoured He Is Mine and I Have No Other in a day, immediately caught up in O'Connor's vividly realised world. The intensity of relationships and shifting loyalties is brilliantly captured as the teenage protagonist, Lani Devine, wrestles with family life, friendship and first love. O'Connor perfectly evokes the passion, uncertainties and awkward misunderstandings of teen love. He Is Mine and I Have No Other is a great achievement and my only complaint is that I wanted more! -- EVER DUNDAS, author of GOBLIN, winner of the Saltire First Book Award 2017



Book Information
ISBN 9781786892621
Author Rebecca O'Connor
Format Paperback
Page Count 240
Imprint Canongate Books
Publisher Canongate Books
Weight(grams) 164g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 15mm