YOU'RE A DESPERATE WOMAN, SHIBBY  MAGEE

Oh, this is such a charmer! Kabak follows the indelible, indefatigable Shibby Magee during two crucial years in her life, one in girlhood and then another at midlife womanhood, as she struggles against prejudice, cruelty, and abandonment in her search to find her true place in an increasingly confounding world, be it in a bustling restaurant or going on the road as an Irish Traveller—a whole extraordinary world of wily outcasts that I had never heard of before and was delighted to encounter. Warm, wise, with dashes of wit and a distinctly Irish accent, Kabak’s novel is just magnificent. 

  Caroline Leavitt 

- New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You and With or Without You

The Fictitious Island of Burren Droma

Excerpt from YOU'RE A DESPERATE WOMAN, SHIBBY MAGEE:

...Shibby having learned a long time ago that strainséirí are tourists, and that sandy is the word for a Burren Droma local. She also knows that sandies are what Benny and Moochie consider themselves to be, after thirty-five years of living here. Despite the islanders trying to put them right, by saying they’ll always be blow-ins. Only Clancy Magee, his late brother Corny, and their ancestors afore them, they insist, are born and bred sandies. 

But, thinks Shibby, Benny and Moochie certainly look the part, whenever they wear their wool ganseys. The collection of fisherman’s sweaters they own, in varying shades of stone, and sea, and sheep.

IRISH GIFTS & SWEATERS