Coast Road sees author Alan Murrin take a narrative risk – resulting in a tour de force domestic drama

Occasionally, a line ­appears in a novel that seems ­relatively ­simple but, after ­turning a few pages, you return to it, write it down in your notebook, and it stays with you. “People really have ­terrible, difficult, hard lives” is one of them. It occurs late in Alan ­Murrin’s debut and struck me as quite moving in its plainness. It’s also a sentiment that’s reflected very well in this book.