The Red Mouth by Sheila Armstrong: Uncovering the past
A life in books | 10.07.2026 14:10
Given how much I enjoyed both her short story collection, How to Gut a Fish, and her debut novel, Falling Animals, you’d think I’d jump at the change to read Sheila Armstrong’s The Red Mouth, but the blurb’s hints of otherworldliness, curses and strange magnetism put me off. Fortunately, the supernatural strand proved to be overplayed. Spanning fifty years, Armstrong’s novel follows four people whose lives are influenced by the discovery of the Belroe Woman in an Irish peat bog in the 1970s.
