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The Red Mouth
The Red Mouth
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Description
'An absolute tour de force ... One of the most powerful writers at work today' COLIN WALSH
'When the book burners knock on your door, this is one to hide in the flour barrel' ANNIE PROULX
'I'll read almost anything in sentences so finely made' SARAH MOSS
'Songlike in its beauty ... A work of uncanny power and great depth' LOUISE KENNEDY
From a rising star in literary fiction comes a story of two discoveries made deep in an Irish bogland, threading together four lives across time.
When a dog finds a strange, alien antler in a restored bog, the owner's first thought is to keep it for himself. But when he realises the value of his find, he is drawn back to the rich peat to keep searching. It is not one stag skeleton that is buried there, but dozens – an ancient dying ground of the Great Irish Elk.
Other things have surfaced from the bog: prehistoric settlements, bronze cauldrons, ancient butter, iron weapons – and the mutilated body of a two-thousand-year-old female. Fifty years ago, a young archaeologist named her Belroe Woman, and dedicated his life to telling the story of her sacrificial death.
While state and public treat the bog body as a national treasure, others must reckon with its otherworldly influence over their lives: the peat-cutter who first unearthed her and carries this discovery like a curse; the archaeologist's daughter who grows up in the shadow of the bog's strange magnetism; and the young environmental scientist whose work draws her back to where it all began.
Haunting and lyrical, The Red Mouth - an béal rua - is the story of two discoveries and the four strangers who become intertwined in their wake. The deep time of the bog is both mystical and sinister: those bound to it must decide what to bury - and what to unearth.
Product details
| Published | Jul 02 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Audiobook |
| Duration | 5 hours and 25 minutes |
| ISBN | 9781526691149 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Circus |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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A story is best if there is something ancient and inexplicable embedded in it. Here is a bog, ancient animal and human remains, archaeologists and their people, and time. The Red Mouth is rich in sentences filled with electric barbwire. Sheila Armstrong is a virtuoso stylist who handles words with Nabokovian surety. Her sentences are like paintings, Irish words caught in the net of her remarkable imagery like migrating birds. When the book-burners knock on your door this is one to hide in the flour barrel
ANNIE PROULX, author of Brokeback Mountain
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Songlike in its beauty, The Red Mouth feels almost primordial, as if it has always existed. A work of uncanny power and great depth
LOUISE KENNEDY, author of Trespasses
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Sheila Armstrong writes about landscapes and their communities with rare delicacy and warmth, and with a gift for the unspoken rooted in the best stories of quiet people. I'll read almost anything in sentences so finely made
SARAH MOSS, author of Ghost Wall
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Reading Sheila Armstrong is like reading Claire Keegan or Donal Ryan for the first time. A writer already touched by greatness
JOSEPH O'CONNOR, author of My Father's House
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The beautifully occulted nature of the world is laid bare in Sheila Armstrong's extraordinary The Red Mouth. Readers will be enthralled and taken deep into the depths of this mesmerizing novel
JEFF VANDERMEER, author of The Southern Reach Trilogy
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An absolute tour de force of language, The Red Mouth pulses with beauty, insight and mounting dread. Sheila Armstrong is one of the most powerful writers at work today - she delves unflinchingly into the treasures and terrors that dwell beneath all our ordinary and extraordinary lives. This novel is a remarkable artistic achievement
COLIN WALSH, author of Kala

























