No Drinking, No Dancing, No Doctors

It is Beulah Kingston's obsession with washing that betrays her. The vigorous scrubbing, wringing and mangling is a psychiatrist's delight. Born into the "queer, shy" Poleite sect, whose austerity forbids drinking, dancing and doctors--and a lot more besides--Beulah grows up with a sensuality that she doesn't understand and cannot express. Plagued by a yearning for the forbidden that eclipses her lifeless marriage to the gentle, decent-hearted Louis, she is drawn to and fascinated by the village doctor Joe Costello, with his dangerous medical words. Beulah's downfall is inevitable.

No Drinking, No Dancing, No Doctors is Martina Evans' third novel, and like Midnight Feast and The Glass Mountain is set in Ireland. It's a quiet, complex story that unravels over the heating of milk and hemming of sheets. Evans, who is also an accomplished poet, circles Beulah's secret and leads us deftly through oral storytelling and interwoven voices across three generations. Beautifully simple yet shot through with awkward emotion, No Drinking, No Dancing, No Doctors is profoundly heartfelt and inspiring.--Jane Honey