A Beautiful Loan

By: Mary Costello

Narrated by: Caitríona Ní Mhurchú

My name is Anna, and for some time now, I have been trying to account for certain events in my life – my adult life, that is – which, from this vantage point of forty-five years, I often find baffling...

In 1985 Dublin, nineteen-year-old Anna Hughes is in thrall to Peter Gallagher, an older, worldly man. Anna is new to the city, introverted and naïve, and Peter’s experience, wide circle of friends and thirst for adventure captivate her. Her obsessive longing for him leads to marriage and, eventually, a crushing betrayal.

As Anna’s life becomes less predictable, she uncovers deeper layers of herself. Her journey gives an intimate portrait of a woman embracing herself as she is, and claiming the life she yearns for.

©2026 Mary Costello (P)2026 Canongate Books Ltd

Critic reviews

An exceptional, compulsive novel of love, loss and courage. Told in poetic, clear-eyed prose, A Beautiful Loan is heart-breaking but unsentimental, and easily Costello's best work yet (SINEAD GLEESON)

A Beautiful Loan is like a beautiful piece of music: true, pure, profound. Anna's quest, in mid-life, to understand herself and the forces that have shaped her thus far, moves and compels. The spirit of Camus, that humane existentialist, hovers over the novel like hope. I am filled with admiration for Mary Costello (CLAIRE MESSUD, author of 'This Strange Eventful History')

Mary Costello's A Beautiful Loan creates a gripping and unsparing portrait of Anna Hughes, whose longing to find 'safety and oneness,' and to submit to love, deepens as both inner and outer worlds close in. This unsettling novel opened before me like a Rorschach test, troubling all my interpretations (MADELEINE THIEN, author of 'The Book of Records')