We are delighted to welcome debut author Oisín McKenna to Deansgate in celebration of his stunning first novel, Evenings and Weekends.
Over the hottest summer on record, a group of interconnected Londoners love, laugh and struggle through their messy lives in McKenna's vibrant, kaleidoscopic debut.
Oisín, in conversation with Jodie Matthews, will chat about his novel and answer audience questions, followed by a signing. Doors at 6pm.
About Evenings and Weekends
Summer in London stops for no-one. Not the half-naked boozers, stoners, and cruisers, the hen parties glugging from bejewelled bottles, the drag queens puffing on hurried fags. It’s June 2019, and everyone has converged on the city’s parks, beer gardens and street corners to revel in the collective joys of being alive.
Everyone but Maggie. She’s 30, pregnant and broke. Faced with moving back to the town she fought to escape, she’s wondering if having a baby with boyfriend Ed will be the last spontaneous act of her life. Ed, meanwhile, is trying to run from his past with Maggie’s best friend Phil and harbouring secret dreams of his own.
Phil hates his office job and is living for the weekend, while falling for his housemate, Keith. But there’s a problem: Keith has a boyfriend and there might not be room for three people in the relationship. Then there’s Rosaleen, Phil’s mother, who’s tired of feeling like a side character in her own life. She’s just been diagnosed with cancer and is travelling to London to tell Phil, if she can ever get hold of him.
Set across two scorching hot days in the feverish capital, Evenings and Weekends is a vivid portrait of a city and its inhabitants that announces the arrival of a vital new literary talent.
About the author
OISÍN McKENNA grew up in Drogheda, Ireland, and lives in London. He was awarded the Next Generation Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland to write Evenings and Weekends and it was developed with further funding from Arts Council England. In 2022, he was awarded a London Writers Award, and in 2017 Oisín was named in the Irish Times as one of the best spoken-word artists in the country. He has written and performed four theatre shows, including ADMIN, an award-winning production at Dublin Fringe 2019, and his writing has appeared in the Irish Times, GQ, Evening Standard, Fantastic Man and more.
