The Mess We're In: A vivid story of friendship, hedonism and finding your own rhythm

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But as the hype around the band intensifies, so does the hedonism, and relationships in the house are growing strained. This is the story of a young woman thrashing through life, trying to find home in a strange new place.

Orla has moved to London from Ireland in pursuit of a career in the music industry- Orla sings, produces and plays guitar, so music is a huge part of her existence. Set in Kilburn, The Mess We’re In is the story of a young Irish woman, Orla Quinn, as she embarks on her London odyssey with hope and expectation. Orla moves into a room in a house-share with her friend Neema and Neema’s brother, who is part of a band called Shiva. All the other band-mates live in the house also. Neema is a law student with a clear career path ahead of her, with Orla’s sights set on the music industry. Orla writes music, plays guitar and has studied music production. She understands the music but she has no direct experience of the music industry. Living with a band has possibilities for Orla but she needs to bide her time and put in some hard and dirty work. I wonder what our little gathering must look like from her perspective: a girl, blushing with pleasure in the corner of a small, steamy restaurant, surrounded by laughing faces. I wonder if I look comfortable in my skin to her. Does she think I belong here? The revised tenth anniversary edition is published on 14 June 2022 in the US, and 15 July 2022 in many other countries.A powerful and occasionally polemical appeal to reason in politics; if you're despairing in search of an antidote to the poison of "alternative facts", here's your book. Like any good political text, there's something here to offend everyone. You'll want to cheer, high-five and occasionally shout your disagreement, but what you won't want to do is put it down.' A book about finding home in a strange new place, and finding yourself when your life is a mess. The hotly anticipated second novel by the Sunday Times bestselling author of Mother Mother .

A heady mix of thrills and heartbreak . . . I enjoyed it so so much' GRAHAM NORTON'What [Macmanus has] managed to do with London, and what London means to different generations of Irish people, is terrific, and deeply moving' RODDY DOYLEI'm a Londoner now. The much-anticipated second novel from author Annie Macmanus, The Mess We’re In is a vibrant, unforgettable tale of a chaotic young woman finding her feet and her sound at such a memorable point in London’s cultural and musical history. Men are unfortunately the undoing of Neema and Orla’s close friendship. As Orla experiences and experiments with sexual freedom (Moses, Vinnie etc) Neema struggles with watching her friend be so free when she is having to live under such conservative boundaries depicted by her Indian family. And also, Orla is really really messy, which drives Neema crazy. This book has left me a little befuddled. The writing is okay, the story is okay. Everything is okay but it's not great.I’m so sad it’s over. I could have read another sixty chapters . . . A fantastic read’ JOANNE MCNALLY

Gerry blinks, looking at his pint, and says, - we don’t all get the luxury of belonging where we’re born. So vivid . . . What [Macmanus has] managed to do with London, and what London means to different generations of Irish people, is terrific, and deeply moving’ RODDY DOYLE Macmanus does a good job of giving us the little details so familiar to Irish people living at home and abroad: the chats with the other ex-pats in the local Irish pub; the maudlin ramblings after drink of how difficult life is/was; the phone calls home where guilt is laid on, however inadvertently. Orla gets caught up in a merry-go-round of being glad to be away from home so she can flourish in a way she believes she couldn’t in Ireland, but then not being able to get away from home in a spiritual sense—the elderly gentlemen in the pub reminding her of what it has to move abroad, her family issues haunting her despite the miles and Irish sea between them, and the nagging feeling that her new life isn’t all that different to what it might have been had she stayed at home – she hasn’t had the expected metamorphosis into a young, hip Londoner quite yet.Orla is Irish and moves to London in her early twenties in 2001. She lives with her friend Neema and Neema’s brother Kesh. Kesh is in a band called Shiva and the rest of the band live there too. A book about finding home in a strange new place, and finding yourself when your life is a mess. The hotly anticipated second novel by the Sunday Times bestselling author of Mother Mother At the end of the book Keane offers ten apparently sensible suggestions for countering these negative drives, which are intended to help us see through what might otherwise seem to be insurmountable impasses. Whether one agrees with them or not, they will at least offer some hope that all is not quite lost. Do you ever read something and instantly think this needs to be adapted into a series? Because that’s the case with The Mess We’re In! While Orla’s own dreams seem to be going nowhere, Shiva are on the brink of something big. But as the hype around the band intensifies, so does the hedonism, and relationships in the house are growing strained.