All the Bad Apples
Moira Fowley-Doyle
The stunning new novel about silenced female voices, family secrets and dangerous truths from the author of The Accident Season.
'Exquisite . . . This is a book to hold tightly to your chest' Irish Times
'Lyrical . . . Compelling' Guardian
'Beautiful, visceral . . . A primal scream' Louise O'Neill
'Uncompromising, raw, devastating' Publishers Weekly
'I am in absolute awe of it' Melinda Salisbury
On Deena's seventeenth birthday, the day she finally comes out to her family, her wild and mysterious sister Mandy is seen leaping from a cliff. The family is heartbroken, but not surprised. The women of the Rys family have always been troubled - 'bad apples', their father calls them - and Mandy is the baddest of them all.
But then Deena starts to receive the letters. Letters from Mandy, claiming that their family's blighted history is not just bad luck or bad decisions, but a curse, handed down to the Rys women through the generations.
Mandy has gone in search of the curse's roots, and now Deena must begin a desperate cross-country hunt for her sister, guided only by the letters that mysteriously appear in each new place. What Deena finds will heal their family's rotten past - or rip it apart forever.
Product Details
About Moira Fowley-Doyle
Reviews for All the Bad Apples
Irish Times
This lyrical, furious examination of victimised, silenced Irish women is compelling
Guardian
This is beautiful, visceral writing; a primal scream that serves as a damning indictment of the way women have been treated in this country
Louise O'Neill, author of Asking For It
Tender and fierce, full of blessings and curses, a fiery avenging angel of a book. I loved how it tied together family and tragedy and history and destiny, winding through generations and knitting everyone together, and, most of all, how it kept the crimes committed against young women who stray from the path at its heart, and exposed them to the sky, turning judgement on the judges, exposing the hypocrisy of it all. I am in absolute awe of it
Melinda Salisbury, author of The Sin Eater's Daughter
Fowley-Doyle travels through generations, examining the power women possess, the things that have been taken from them, and the things they fight to reclaim . . . An astonishingly potent offering to women who break the mould
Booklist
An uncompromising, raw tale . . . Told in a mix of letters, family stories, and narrative, this devastating novel manages to find hope for the future while sending pointed messages that are as vital as they are timely
Publishers Weekly
Beautiful and visceral, All the Bad Apples is for readers who've had enough of shame and secrets. This essential book unearths what patriarchy wants to keep buried, dragging truth into the light with a fierce belief in the power of telling stories. Moira Fowley-Doyle has crafted a tale devastating in its universality
Joy McCullough, author of Blood Water Paint
Intense social motivation sits easily alongside loveable characters and a compelling narrative . . . All The Bad Apples isn't just about evil doings, it's about silence too, and the complicity of that silence - the further evil done by knowing and not saying . . . The most emotive moment comes when the characters, previously almost crushed by their fate, realise the enormous power of telling their stories, loudly and without fear
Irish Independent
Compelling . . . the book has a simmering, authentically righteous fury
Bulletin for the Center of Children's Books
Hints of magic, from a family curse to a banshee's wail, amplify the sense of mystery . . . evocative writing, eerie details, and intense emotional content. Compelling
Kirkus
With a memorable blend of magic and reality, Fowley-Doyle tells a harrowing and ultimately empowering story
The Horn Book