Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Prize The luminous novel by one of the finest living Irish writers, which Brian Moore has praised as "in every sense a triumph…moving throughout and ending triumphantly and joyously in its own special music." Grace Notes is a compact and altogether masterful portrait of a woman composer and the complex interplay between her life and her art. With superb artistry and startling intimacy, it brings us into the life of Catherine McKenna―estranged daughter, vexed lover, new mother, and musician making her mark in a male-dominated world. It is a book that the Virginia Woolf of A Room of One's Own would instantly understand. "MacLaverty summons up a time and a place with an unerring exactness reminiscent of Joyce's Dubliners … a magnificent portrait of the sources and ends, wretchedness and rewards, of creativity." ― Sunday Times (UK) "Page after page something delighted and moved me―marvelous, vivid tours of emotion, intelligence, poetry―every step of the way. Compelling." ― Dennis McFarland, author of The Music Room "I was reminded of the way Joyce Cary so brilliantly portrayed a painter's life in The Horse's Mouth .… What a wonderful writer [MacLaverty] is!" ― Andrea Barrett "More ambitious than any of his previous work… a remarkable novel." ― Anna Mundow, Boston Globe Bernard MacLaverty is the author of five previous collections of stories and five novels, including Grace Notes , which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Midwinter Break , shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. Born in Ireland, he now lives in Glasgow, Scotland.