The First Day

Outside an east Belfast mission hall, pastor and family man Samuel Orr meets Anna, a young Beckett scholar. They embark on an intense love affair, their connection fuelled by their respective passions. When Anna falls pregnant, the affair is revealed. The repercussions are slow to emerge but inescapable, and the fallout is shocking, cruel and violent.

More than thirty years later Sam, their son, is in New York, living a steady, guarded life, his childhood and family safely abandoned.

But the sins of the fathers are not to be so easily buried; the past crashes inevitably into the present, and Sam is forced to confront the fears he has kept close for decades.

“Terrific, it is expanding and expanding all the time, like its own model universe - I just think it is pretty marvellous Set in a defamiliarised Belfast, The First Day is an auspicious debut - crisp, spare, lean and compelling Written with a burning intensity, this is a powerful novel about marriage, passion, anger and guilt - Daily MailGripping . . . This is a truly excellent novel, on all counts. The First Day is as well-written as any Irish novel I've read, with tight, dispassionate and superbly controlled prose - Belfast Telegraph”

Terrific, it is expanding and expanding all the time, like its own model universe - I just think it is pretty marvellous

Set in a defamiliarised Belfast, The First Day is an auspicious debut - crisp, spare, lean and compelling

Written with a burning intensity, this is a powerful novel about marriage, passion, anger and guilt - Daily Mail

Gripping . . . This is a truly excellent novel, on all counts. The First Day is as well-written as any Irish novel I've read, with tight, dispassionate and superbly controlled prose - Belfast Telegraph

Phil Harrison's first feature film, The Good Man, was released in 2014. His earlier short, Even Gods, won the short film award at the Belfast, Galway and Cork Film Festivals in 2011, and was shortlisted for the best short script at the 2012 Irish Screenwriting Awards. He lives in Belfast. The First Day is his debut novel.

Outside an east Belfast mission hall, pastor and family man Samuel Orr meets Anna, a young Beckett scholar. They embark on an intense love affair, their connection fuelled by their respective passions. When Anna falls pregnant, the affair is revealed. The repercussions are slow to emerge but inescapable, and the fallout is shocking, cruel and violent.More than thirty years later Sam, their son, is in New York, living a steady, guarded life, his childhood and family safely abandoned.But the sins of the fathers are not to be so easily buried; the past crashes inevitably into the present, and Sam is forced to confront the fears he has kept close for decades.

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