Everybody Knows the Chorus

There are forty-three weddings in the diary. One bandleader has just retired. And nobody thought to warn Niamh Merrigan.For thirty-four years, the Merrigans have been making music for other people's happiest days. Then, halfway through a wedding in County Cork, seventy-year-old Seán Merrigan takes the microphone and announces his retirement.His daughter Niamh is forty-two, runs a successful events business in Dublin, and has spent most of her life keeping everybody else's plans on track.Now there are couples counting on the family band, a brother and sister with their own ideas about its future, and a father who seems determined to enjoy retirement without worrying about the consequences.Then Dáire Keane arrives.A drummer who listens more than he talks, Dáire has a disconcerting habit of letting Niamh make her own decisions instead of asking her to solve his problems. And somewhere between the rehearsals, wedding receptions, family dinners and unexpected moments together, Niamh begins to wonder whether she has been so busy keeping everyone else happy that she has forgotten what happiness might look like for herself.Warm, sharply funny and full of heart, Everybody Knows the Chorus is an Irish family novel about love, loyalty, changing family roles and discovering that you don't have to carry the whole song alone.