Map of Ireland

"Stephanie Grant's fast-paced but beautifully turned new novel brings to troubled life once more the South Boston of the 1970s. It also brings to life Ann Ahern, a bright, wisecracking teenager who is part Huck Finn and part Holden Caulfield -- as well as a maturing young woman with sexual longings for certain people who are both the 'wrong' race and the 'wrong' gender. Ann's freckled face, she's told, is a map of Ireland -- but it's also a mask that Stephanie Grant strips to reveal a funny, sad, deeply sympathetic character." -- Mary Jo Salter, author of Open Shutters and Sunday Skaters

"Winged words, new words: arrondissement. Nostalgie. Pyromaniac. Penance and confession. Language is Ann Ahern's and Map of Ireland's magic charm. Making all new vocabulary that comes her way her own, including Irish-rooted hyperbole, this remarkable heroine defines herself through the words she acquires and 'becomes.' Drawing on foundational American myths about race and identity, Grant has written an unusual hybrid: a coming-of-age novel of ideas. This is smart work." -- Pearl Abraham, author of The Seventh Beggar

"In Map of Ireland, Stephanie Grant has written a novel of hard times that is a jagged jewel of perfection. With Ann Ahern, she has created a protagonist of fierce individuality, daunting irony, and always surprising courage -- it is as if Charles Dickens had written a tomboy." -- Honor Moore, author of The Bishop's Daughter

"Stephanie Grant's Map of Ireland is an openhearted, funny, and brave novel about the complexities of growing up in working-class Boston in the seventies. In Ann Ahern, she may have created the best tough-girl character since Scout Finch." -- Dana Spiotta, author of Eat the Document

"Map of Ireland is one of those novels that unexpectedly fell into my lap and I was immediately hooked. I could not put this book down. Riveting, clear-eyed, brutally honest, Grant's story draws us into the Boston racial crisis brought to a head during the busing campaigns in the seventies. In the midst of this struggle, out steps Ann Ahern -- one of the most disarming, haunted, and gorgeously conflicted narrators to come along in years. You will love this girl. Ann Ahern will charm you; disarm you. She will enrage you, but she will never let you go." -- Alison Smith, author of Name All the Animals