Marble Heart

Nina is a sophisticated professional, crisp and clever but stricken by illness; Joan, her care worker, is a simpler soul – thoughtful, generous, and thrilled that, at last, she is to be married. Nina has specifically asked for Joan to tend her, but the latter does not know why. She never suspects that the little that she has had in life Nina is about to destroy.

"Mulrooney has taken her subject not the indigenous people of Belfast who have grown up with the troubles, but outsiders who have gatecrashed it. There is the absurd spectacle of Nina, a middle-class girl from Maidstone, and the 'comrades' plotting the revolution over wine and French cheeses in a huge, inherited house. All of this is wickedly, sharply amusing. But when they really join the party with an act of meaningless terror, Mulrooney shows how contagious and destructive that situation was. And as Nina slowly takes the sweet-natured Joan as her final victim, 'Marble Heart' proves itself to be an excellent lesson in the difference between cleverness and wisdom"
THE TIMES