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

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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. Coming of age book which anyone who has left home to try to find themselves/leave a mess behind will identify with. I laughed out loud in some parts. 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

I’m so sad it’s over. I could have read another sixty chapters . . . A fantastic read’ JOANNE MCNALLY The story (such as it is) follows Orla who has come to London via Cheltenham to live with her best friend, Neema and the members of Neema's brother's band "Shiva". Orla has her own ambitions to write, sing and produce her own music but she finds out fast that there's no easy route to that happening.I related to the experience of working in a pub, which I did for most of my teenage years, and how it feels so cosy and time is suspended there, and you find yourself becoming friends with a lot of people you'd never talk to outside. When everyone’s gone from the pub, Pat lets her tiredness take her over, her mouth sagging downwards into an upside down U. This book has left me a little befuddled. The writing is okay, the story is okay. Everything is okay but it's not great.

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.I perhaps need a bit more time to digest this book and all that it made me feel. The things I really loved was the authenticity of life as a 20-something just out of college in the year 2001, I was just a year younger than the character at this time and it made me reminisce so much about the music/gig scene and political feelings of the time. Although Orla is nothing like me, I felt I understood where she was coming from and in particular her relationships with her family. The correlation with Orla's Da and what I also experienced in my mid-20s was very well written and I felt all the emotions in my core. Annie McManus writes beautifully with such description and I truly enjoyed absorbing every word lyrically. Published May 2023, The Mess We're In is the second book from Sunday Times Bestselling author Annie Macmanus.

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.I enjoyed all the characters, it kind of gave me a YA feel, in a good way. It reminded me a lot of How To Build A Girl by Caitlin Moran. The flaws of Orla kind of added to this as well, and I liked Annie's perspective on this at the end. 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 . 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.

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.' There isn’t too much of a plot, it’s just a nice story following Orla as she learns to live in London and away from her family who are in Dublin. The ending felt rushed, the best part of a book is the feeling of catharsis you get at the end. Which this book didn’t provide. I would’ve like to feel more a build towards the end, even if things still don’t end up wrapped up neatly with a bow (which is not what i expect of every book i read).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. Also, I used to work with old people, a lot of whom were first-gen Irish immigrants who lived in Kilburn and the surrounding areas of London, so some of this really resonated with me. Totally captures the highs and lows, emotional and personal costs associated with those aspiring to be part of the tough world that is the music business’ COSEY FANNI TUTTI