Savage Her Reply by Deirdre Sullivan

A feminist retelling of favourite Irish fairytale The Children of Lir.

Aífe marries Lir, a chieftain with four children by his previous wife. Jealous of his affection for his children, the witch Aífe turns them into swans for 900 years. Retold through the voice of Aífe, Savage Her Reply is unsettling and dark, yet nuanced in its exploration of the guilt of a complex character.

Deirdre Sullivan is an award-winning writer from Galway in the West of Ireland. She has written more than ten acclaimed works of fiction, and is Ireland's most acclaimed YA author. Savage Her Reply is her tenth book. On initial publication in Europe, Savage Her Reply won the Young Adult Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, the Children’s Book Ireland Awards Book of the Year Award, and the Biennial Literacy Association of Ireland Young Adult Book Award. Her collection of dark and witchy fairytale retellings, Tangleweed and Brine (Little Island Books), won Book of the Year at the 2018 Children’s Books Ireland awards and Young Adult Book of the Year at the 2017 Irish Book Awards. Deirdre also writes short fiction and poetry, which has been published in places like Banshee, The Penny Dreadful, Mslexia and the Dublin Review. Her play Wake was performed by No Ropes theatre company in February 2019.