Aine McCartney has made a strong debut with this her first novel. Its central character, Clare, moves home from London to West Belfast after the bruising end of a 10-year love affair. She's a successful actress whose friends consider her temporary move home as a foolhardy exile to cultural Siberia. Even she finds the adjustment to life with her elderly father difficult - she may have dined out on her working class origins with her smart London friends but the reality of life in the small terraced house in Belfast is very different.
However she soon finds an acting job, a lover and the ability to put an emotional distance between her old life in London and her future. Just as things are going smoother than she could ever have imagined, a very real drama occurs that makes her truly re-evaluate what she wants from her life.
Desire Lines is a well-plotted book that sustains the story until the end and McCartney - who herself trained and worked as an actress in London before moving home to Belfast to write - has a strong observational style that's pacy and light. If anything she has perhaps been a bit ambitious in the number of characters and subplots in the book - sometimes they distract from Clare's own story.
Bernice Harrison is an Irish Times journalist