Clara and Christina
New novel, 30th July, 2026
“The world is much more like a novel than a reliable machine, Clara. Its narratives are interesting, its characters do the most surprising things.”
When young academic Clara Wilson gets the opportunity to interview the acclaimed novelist Christina Darnell in Belfast, she anticipates a major biographical scoop for her academic book. Who is this mysterious writer? What secrets are lingering behind her novels? And why has she agreed to be interviewed again so late in her career? Clara wants to unpeel the truth behind the fiction. But Christina has another lesson in store for Clara.
Over a few months, a relationship forms between two women who live their lives in books. Clara, writing her first, leans in and learns from a writer finishing her final book. During this time, Clara, face to face with her hero, begins to question her own convictions. Faced with a publication deadline, a newfound friendship with her subject and Christina's own failing health, Clara questions the very logic of her life, ultimately asking herself: what if there is nothing but fiction?
'Christina Darnell is a revelation of character who will stay with me for the rest of my life.'
Lousie Nealon, author of Everything That is Beautiful
Andrew Cunning
Andrew is a writer and teacher from the north coast of Ireland. He previously published a study of the American novelist and essayist, Marilynne Robinson and can occasionally be found talking about books, religion and politics.
In 2025 he was a winner of the Irish Novel Fair.
Clara and Christina is his first novel.
‘It is a careful, intelligent, original book, a really significant contribution to the understanding of this remarkable thinker and storyteller.’
Rowan Williams
Cunning's wonderfully attentive and illuminating readings of Robinson's novels represent a key contribution to our understanding of her work as a theology of the exceptional ordinary.
David Coughlan, University of Limerick,
