Breakdown:The humane Irish Bestseller about the dark side of modern motherhood

Cathy Sweeney

'Riveting from the start' IRISH INDEPENDENT 'Thrillingly relatable' HARPER'S BAZAAR 'A vivid portrait of a woman adrift' OBSERVER Mothers are not supposed to go on road trips . . . But one winter morning in Dublin, an ordinary woman wakes up in her ordinary home, her husband next to her in bed, her teenage children sleeping nearby. And - without thinking much about it - walks out the front door and never comes back. So begins a journey which will take her into service stations and shopping centres, hotel bars and hairdressers - and the beds of strange men. Until finally, forty-eight hours later, alone in a cottage in Wales, the woman faces up to what she has been ignoring inside herself, her family, modern society: signs of breakdown.