Fathers Come First

By Rosita Sweetman

"This book has everything: nuns, sex, confusion, mini skirts, drink, misogyny." - Shane McGowan

Rosita Sweeman's Fathers Come First is a coming-of-age classic set against a Dublin-city backdrop.

Elizabeth is both daring and subversive, grappling with the pressures of conforming to societal expectations in 70s Ireland - social, physical and sexual. In a world informed by a Catholic upbringing, she wonders whether her indiscretions belong in the letterbox or the confession box.

Curious, unflinching and disarmingly honest, teenager turned twenty-something Lizzie speaks to the changes and continuities in Irish society across forty years. This is a novel as relevant today as when it was first published in 1974.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Lilliput Press
• Release date: Oct 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781843516484

Rosita Sweetman

From Rosita's Twitter Bio: Wordsmith. Curator. Editor. Founding member of the Irish Women's Movement. Rosita Sweetman is the author of the pioneering On Our Kness: Ireland 1972, twenty-four profiles of Irish people north and south, and On Our Backs (1979), profiles and interviews that charted the changing mores of the last quarter of twentieth century Ireland. Her first novel Fathers Come First was recently republished in 2014 to mark its fortieth anniversary.