Eighteen-year-old Debbie White lives on a dairy farm with her mother, Maeve, and her uncle, Billy. Billy sleeps out in a caravan in the garden with a bottle of whiskey and the stars overhead for company. Maeve spends her days recording her dreams which she believes to be prophecies.
This world is Debbie’s normal, but she is about to step into life as a student at Trinity College Dublin. As she navigates between sophisticated new friends and the family bubble, things begin to unravel. Maeve’s eccentricity tilts into something darker, while Billy’s drinking gets worse. Debbie struggles to cope with the weirdest, most difficult parts of herself, her family and her small life. But the fierce love of the White family is never in doubt, and Debbie discovers that even the oddest of families are places of safety.
A startling, honest, laugh and cry novel about growing up and leaving home, only to find that you’ve taken it with you, Snowflake is a novel for a generation, and for everyone who’s taken those first, terrifying steps towards adulthood. Winner of Newcomer of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards 2021.
© Kate Donaldson Photography
By Louise Nealon
Louise Nealon is a writer from County Kildare. She has a degree in English literature from Trinity College Dublin and a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from Queen’s University Belfast. In 2017, she won the Cork International Short Story Competition. Her debut novel, Snowflake was released in May 2021, and won Newcomer of the Year at the An Post Book Awards. Snowflake has been translated into several languages including German, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Italian, Croatian, Slovakian and Chinese. Her short story ‘What Feminism Is,’ is currently being adapted into a short film by Pure Divilment Pictures. Louise is currently working on her second novel.
The Publisher
Snowflake is published by Manilla Press, an imprint of Bonnier Books UK.
About Bonnier Books UK
At Bonnier Books UK, we believe that every book matters. We love to publish stories and content that open our eyes to new perspectives and bring us closer together. We offer a nurturing home for our authors, illustrators and brand partners, publishing bestselling books for readers and listeners everywhere. We know that fantastic stories can come from anywhere and our purpose is to bring them to as wide an audience as possible, a simple ethos that has led to us becoming one of the country’s leading publishers. The offspring of Bonnier Books, a family-owned top-15 world publisher headquartered in Sweden, we are inspired by a rich literary heritage but not bound by convention. We think in generations rather than quarters, and strive always to operate in an open, curious way that contributes to the future of the planet and its people. As a climate-neutral publisher we are an active participant in the Science Based Target initiative, committed to a strategy to limit global warming to 1.5 °C.
