Our London Lives

1979. In the vast and often unforgiving city of London, two Irish outsiders seeking refuge find one another: Milly, a teenage runaway, and Pip, a young boxer full of anger and potential who is beginning to drink it all away.

Our London Lives has been shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards

 

‘Sprawling yet intimate’ Guardian
‘Huge of heart and soaring of soul’ CLAIRE KILROY
‘A profound love story…Like Barbara Kingsolver, Hickey captures the pulse of the living moment’ COLUM McCANN
‘A London novel that captures the living moment of the city across decades’ PAUL LYNCH

1979. In the vast and often unforgiving city of London, two Irish outsiders seeking refuge find one another: Milly, a teenage runaway, and Pip, a young boxer full of anger and potential who is beginning to drink it all away.
Over the decades their lives follow different paths, interweaving from time to time, often in one another’s sight, always on one another’s mind, yet rarely together.
Forty years on, Milly is clinging onto the only home she’s ever really known while Pip, haunted by T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, traipses the streets of London and wrestles with the life of the recovering alcoholic. And between them, perhaps uncrossable, lies the unspoken span of their lives.
Dark and brave, this epic novel offers a rich and moving portrait of an ever-changing city, and a profound inquiry into character, loneliness and the nature of love.

Interviews

Pat Kenny Show Newstalk Radio https://irepod.com/podcast/highlights-from-the-pat-kenny-show/christine-dwyer-hickey-on-our-london-lives

Matt Cooper RTE 2FM https://www.goloudnow.com/podcasts/the-last-word-with-matt-cooper-24/culture-club-christine-dwyer-hickey-486644

Miriam on Sunday. Radio One. https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22430328/

Foreign Rights

The German and Dutch translation rights have now been sold.

Dutch edition of Our London Lives due November 2024.

Audiobook

Audible

https://www.audible.com/pd/Our-London-Lives-Audiobook/B0D9HQ1VQS?bp_o=true&ipRedirectOverride=true&language=en_US&overrideBaseCountry=true

Reviews

The Irish Times

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2024/09/07/our-london-lives-a-masterful-work-full-of-skilful-nuance-and-profound-truth/

The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/aug/29/our-london-lives-by-christine-dwyer-hickey-review-the-irish-diaspora

Independent

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/like-fontaines-dc-christine-dwyer-hickey-explores-the-monstrous-freedom-of-irish-emigrants-in-london/a1650578556.html

Joan’s Pics (New Zealand).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFr0MKRQPRM

Dubray Books

https://blog.dubraybooks.ie/2024/08/12/our-london-lives/

Dorothy Allen radio interview Irish Cultural Centre London. The work of Christine Dwyer Hickey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmR-mbjumfg

Review by Richard Aldous on Arena Radio 1

https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22438102/

Review by Eric Karl Anderson