'A near-flawless novel from an Irish writer who just gets better and better' IRISH TIMES

Two couples. Twenty years. One unforgettable story.

Dylan, Stevie and Ben have been inseparable since their days at Trinity, when life pulsed with possibility. A single glance can still summon their younger selves: dancing beneath flashing lights, salt on their skin after swims in Dublin Bay.

Two decades later, their dreams have faltered. Dylan, once a rugby star, is stranded on the sofa, tended by his wife, Rachel. Across town, in their new build, Stevie and Ben's relationship has settled into an airless routine. Then, after countless auditions, Ben lands a role in Pinter's Betrayal.

As rehearsals unfold, the play's shifting loyalties seep into reality, stirring old jealousies and awakening forbidden longings, as each must confront how far they are willing to go in pursuit of desire.

Wry, sexy and deftly observed, Little Vanities is a novel about the perilous thrill of stepping outside the roles we've been given-and the distance between the lives we imagined and the ones we find ourselves living.

THE BOOK OF THE SUMMER READERS CAN'T STOP TALKING ABOUT:

'I absolutely loved this book' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'A beautifully written, character-driven drama' ⭐⭐⭐⭐

'Such a page-turner. I flew through it' ⭐⭐⭐⭐

'A very captivating book' ⭐⭐⭐⭐



Sarah Gilmartin's short stories have been published in The Dublin Review, The Tangerine and The Stinging Fly. She won the Máirtín Crawford Short Story Award in 2020. Her novels Dinner Party: A Tragedy (2021), Service (2023) and the forthcoming Little Vanities (2026) are published by ONE. She was the 2025 Arts Council Writer-in-Residence at Dublin City University.



Acutely observed, beautifully written, compelling readable, fizzing with insight and truthfulness, this is a wonderful novel



Gilmartin is a natural writer: she gives us terrific, complex characters and strong themes, in a prose that is fluent and charged with insight



Gilmartin excels at complex and authentic characters. We get friendship, lies, recrimination, resentment, jealousy, betrayal and sex, bidden and forbidden. In other words, all the good stuff. . . A near-flawless novel from an Irish writer who just gets better and better



Wonderfully authentic, electrifying - there are dramas within dramas here and the unravelling is exhilarating when it comes



A sharply told tale of love, desire and the cost of what might have been



Messy, complicated, compelling, you will not be able to stop reading this story of the deepest of betrayals



Fantastic at examining the tussles between people in relationships of all kinds



Little Vanities is a riveting tale of emotional infidelity, in which the reader's loyalty is constantly shifting. It had me hooked from the first page to the last. Gilmartin's wry observations on human behaviour are a joy. She understands that lust and betrayal are thrilling- when they happen to other people. I devoured this book.



Nimble, evocatively rendered. . . for all the treacheries between romantic partners, the most intriguing betrayals can be those between friends. . . Little Vanities deftly expands Pinter's tight three-hander into a more rounded ensemble piece



I love Sarah Gilmartin's writing. Her third novel is the work of a very gifted novelist. Here the focus is on the nexus of relationships between four long-time friends, but the book is also skilfully suggestive of wider realities about the Ireland in which they came of age



Gilmartin's Dublin novel follows old Trinity friends whose routines are unsettled by buried desire, secrets and a Pinter play. Its appeal is sharp social observation, intimate betrayals and the uneasy pleasure of watching familiar lives crack open



Propulsive. . . the characters are so authentically and sympathetically written that the reader can't help but be pulled along, desperate to find out what happens to them. . . really enjoyable and thought-provoking. A must for long-time lovers everywhere



Gilmartin writes about relationships with great precision and insight. Her characters find themselves trapped by their life choices and reckoning with the cost of overturning them. This is a scrupulous and elegant novel about the realities of adulthood