Story of Before

 I wonder today how no one else could see the bad thing coming. Not that I knew back then what the bad thing was; and if I had - if I'd known one of us was going to die - would there have been anything I could have done to prevent it? I play it all back in my mind, over and over. The clues were all there. On New Year's Eve, eleven-year-old Ruth and her brother and sister sit at a bedroom window, watching the garden of their new Dublin home being covered in a thick blanket of snow. Ruth declares that a bad thing will happen in the coming year - she's sure of it. But she cannot see the outline of that thing. She cannot know that it will change their lives utterly, that the shape of their future will be carved into two parts; the before and the after. Or that it will break her heart and her family. This is Ruth's story. It is the story of before.

Review: The Story of Before is a bewitching read, a book that transports you back to the world of childhood, where everything outside of yourself is a mystery to be unraveled. Beautifully observed, the novel conjures up the landscape of nineteen-seventies Dublin as effectively as a time machine. I can't recommend it highly enough -- Kathleen MacMahon

This is an enthralling book full of complicated relationships and wonderfully drawn characters. A most impressive debut -- Sarah Broadhurst * Bookseller *

Stairs revels in sharp physical description, tinged with implication... An assured debut * Sunday Times *

Wow. This is good, the characters very alive, the complicated relationships enthralling. Highly recommended * Love Reading *

With this moving and evocative novel, Stairs has won her spurs as an emerging new voice in Irish quality women's fiction * Irish Independent *

As literary Ireland continues to await the definitive novel of Celtic tiger Ireland, first-time novelist Susan Stairs has swept in under the radar to pique our interest with a pre-tiger-era story which makes for perhaps more beguiling reading * Sunday Business Post *