Breakdown

One winter morning in contemporary Dublin, a middle-class woman wakes up next to her husband in her suburban home. This seems normal enough until, without conscious purpose,  she walks out the front door to begin a journey of profound transfiguration.

She travels first by car and then train to Rosslare, from where she takes a ferry to Fishguard in Wales. Along the way, she finds herself in service stations, shopping centres, train stations, and ferry terminals. She recalls her youth, earlier fantasies of suicide and reminisces about those people who have come in and out of her life.

Finally, 48 hours later, alone and isolated in a cottage in Wales, in a strange and eerie landscape, the woman reaches her nadir.

Breakdown is a novel about the rage and reckoning of a middle aged, educated woman who has lived her life in accordance with the expectations of society.