Evenings and Weekends by Oisin McKenna
It’s June 2019 in London and everyone has converged on the parks, beer gardens and street corners to revel in the collective joys of being alive. Everyone but Maggie. She’s 30, pregnant and broke.
Faced with moving back to the town she fought to escape, she’s wondering if having a baby with boyfriend Ed will be the last spontaneous act of her life. Ed, meanwhile, is trying to run from his past with Maggie’s best friend Phil and harbouring secret dreams of his own. Phil hates his office job and is living for the weekend, while falling for his housemate, Keith.
But there’s a problem: Keith has a boyfriend and there might not be room for three people in the relationship. Then there’s Rosaleen, Phil’s mother, who’s tired of feeling like a side character in her own life. She’s just been diagnosed with cancer and is travelling to London to tell Phil, if she can ever get hold of him.
As Saturday night approaches, all their lives are set to change forever. It’s the hottest summer on record and the weekend is about to begin.
It’s June 2019 in London and everyone has converged on the parks, beer gardens and street corners to revel in the collective joys of being alive. Everyone but Maggie. She’s 30, pregnant and broke.
Faced with moving back to the town she fought to escape, she’s wondering if having a baby with boyfriend Ed will be the last spontaneous act of her life. Ed, meanwhile, is trying to run from his past with Maggie’s best friend Phil and harbouring secret dreams of his own. Phil hates his office job and is living for the weekend, while falling for his housemate, Keith.
But there’s a problem: Keith has a boyfriend and there might not be room for three people in the relationship. Then there’s Rosaleen, Phil’s mother, who’s tired of feeling like a side character in her own life. She’s just been diagnosed with cancer and is travelling to London to tell Phil, if she can ever get hold of him.
As Saturday night approaches, all their lives are set to change forever. It’s the hottest summer on record and the weekend is about to begin.
It’s June 2019 in London and everyone has converged on the parks, beer gardens and street corners to revel in the collective joys of being alive. Everyone but Maggie. She’s 30, pregnant and broke.
Faced with moving back to the town she fought to escape, she’s wondering if having a baby with boyfriend Ed will be the last spontaneous act of her life. Ed, meanwhile, is trying to run from his past with Maggie’s best friend Phil and harbouring secret dreams of his own. Phil hates his office job and is living for the weekend, while falling for his housemate, Keith.
But there’s a problem: Keith has a boyfriend and there might not be room for three people in the relationship. Then there’s Rosaleen, Phil’s mother, who’s tired of feeling like a side character in her own life. She’s just been diagnosed with cancer and is travelling to London to tell Phil, if she can ever get hold of him.
As Saturday night approaches, all their lives are set to change forever. It’s the hottest summer on record and the weekend is about to begin.
About the Author
Oisín McKenna grew up in Drogheda, Ireland, and lives in London. He was awarded the Next Generation Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland to write Evenings and Weekends – the highest award for an emerging artist in Ireland – and it was developed with further funding from Arts Council England. Evenings and Weekends has been awarded a 2022 London Writers Award, which supports London’s most promising underrepresented writers. In 2017, Oisín was named in the Irish Times as one of the best spoken-word artists in the country. He has written and performed four theatre shows, including ADMIN, an award-winning production at Dublin Fringe 2019, and has written for outlets including the Irish Times on issues such as gentrification and the alienation of Dublin’s youth.
Praise for Evenings and Weekends
'Electric and intimate. Bottles the exhilaration of youthful desire and possibility, as well as the accompanying instability'
- The Guardian
‘Sexy, clever and shockingly alive. I have never read a book that captures what London feels like so compellingly’
- Tomasz Jedrowski
'Intoxicating. By the end of the summer, this will be a much-thumbed book atop many bedside stacks and best-of lists'
- Irish Times
Publisher: Fourth Estate Ltd
Date Published: 9 May 2024
Hardback, 352 pages
ISBN: 9780008604172
