Watermark
Sean O'Reilly

Publication Date: 23^rd May 2005

Clothbound €25.00 ISBN 0-9550152-0-0 100 signed and numbered copies. SOLD OUT (Plus €2.00 P&P)

Paperback €10.00 ISBN 0-9550152-1-9   (Plus €2.00 P&P)

Available to purchase in most good bookshops throughout the country.

First Reviews

'It hurts nicely in the head now to read Sean O'Reilly. The brain reels with impressions and evocations barely hinted at before receding in the agglutination of new ones. The temples pulse from tracing verbal hints, plot outlines and character silhouettes. The eyes strain from imagistic short phrases and headily descriptive long lines that roll on without the brakes of proper punctuation. It all amounts to a kind of you-fill-in-the-gaps vertigo generated by a devotee of innovative and complex prose who is simultaneously one of our least condescending writers. . . . a moving celebration, beyond mere exoticism, of one woman's bodily appetites. Read and reread and reach for your superlatives: in all senses, Watermark is a sheer physical experience.'
The Irish Times, May 21^st 2005

'People who think poetry or poetically-charged prose should be all positive thoughts will have a rollercoaster ride of it here. But poetry this certainly is, and not despite but because of its earthiness, its earthedness, its refusal to look away. This short, uncomfortable, sometimes brutal, hugely important book is a triumph.'
The Irish Independent, May 28^th 2005

Watermark tells the story of Veronica a young woman living on the edge of desire and reason in an unnamed Irish city. As with his three earlier books, Sean O'Reilly proves himself here to be a genuine prose stylist, possessed of a uniquely dark and powerful vision of our contemporary culture.

A virtuosic performance combining formal experimentation with brave and beautiful storytelling, Watermark seals O'Reilly's reputation as one of Europe's most exciting young writers.

Sean O'Reilly was born in Derry in 1969 and is the author of the short story collection, Curfew and Other Stories (2000), and the novels, Love and Sleep (2002) and The Swing of Things (2004).

"Watermark is like some hybrid offspring of a Tolstoy heroine and a Kerouac grin. Sean O'Reilly writes with the energetic zest of a beat poet. A born romantic about his subjects (the classics: love, sex, fear, death), he creates in Veronica a Bovary
bang up to date for the digital age."
Jimmy Fay, Artistic Director, Bedrock Theatre Company

"There is a cumulative, incantatory power to the sentences . . . beautifully bludgeoning language, which hammers at us and hammers, and will draw blood
from any human reader."
Keith Ridgway, Author of The Parts and The Long Falling