It’s 2000, and she makes the more with her best friend Neema who she met at uni in Cheltenham. Neema’s brother Kesh is in a band - Shiva, along with Richie and Frank, and they have a spare room that Neema and Orla can move into.

After moving to Cheltneham via Dublin for uni, Orla is ready to take on the big smoke and moves in with an up and coming band, Shiva in Kilburn. (Or County Kilburn if you will 😂). Orla juggles trying to achieve a career within music for herself all while balancing two jobs and a headonistic lifestyle. Published May 2023, The Mess We're In is the second book from Sunday Times Bestselling author Annie Macmanus.The story (such as it is) follows Orla who has come to London via Cheltenham to live with her best friend, Neema and the members of Neema's brother's band "Shiva". Orla has her own ambitions to write, sing and produce her own music but she finds out fast that there's no easy route to that happening. I feel like this book is aimed at a very particular person - in theory, I was in a similar position to Orla around the same time, having moved away from home for the first time in 2001. There's where the similarities ended - all the characters seemed to do was take drugs while living in squalor. Their flat sounded disgusting, and they were all struggling to make ends meet yet were out every night getting absolutely mangled. They just all really irritated me (except maybe Neema, who was the only one taking anything seriously) - Orla was in no position to judge her mother or sister for drinking when she was off her head daily. Ditto her father's relationship - she was horrible to his new partner and came off like a bratty teenager instead of a supposed independent woman trying to have a career in music. This is another book that is set SO close to an area I use to live which made me enjoy the story just a little extra haha. Set in Kilburn, The Mess We’re In is the story of a young Irish woman, Orla Quinn, as she embarks on her London odyssey with hope and expectation. Orla moves into a room in a house-share with her friend Neema and Neema’s brother, who is part of a band called Shiva. All the other band-mates live in the house also. Neema is a law student with a clear career path ahead of her, with Orla’s sights set on the music industry. Orla writes music, plays guitar and has studied music production. She understands the music but she has no direct experience of the music industry. Living with a band has possibilities for Orla but she needs to bide her time and put in some hard and dirty work. The authors have drawn on decades of teaching workshops with an approach known as Work That Reconnects. This book is filled with stories, questions, and group exercises which are obviously taken from their workshops. It’s the sort of book that could fit well with a group meeting regularly to discuss one chapter at a time.

A very astute overview of problems with our political systems in the present day. Not just in Australia, but in other major allies as well (the UK and USA) It describes how greed has overtaken humanity. How people are losing confidence in the people they chose to represent them. I can’t see the river from here, but I love looking at it on the map, with its Looney Tunes curves, as if a child has scribbled it into existence.Twenty something Orla is keen to leave Ireland and her student days in Cheltenham behind and really begin her life in London. Also, I used to work with old people, a lot of whom were first-gen Irish immigrants who lived in Kilburn and the surrounding areas of London, so some of this really resonated with me. Annie Macmanus’s second novel hints at what to expect from the title alone - “The Mess We’re In”. Dubliner Orla has moved to England, hoping her life will finally begin, that she will get her break into music and become the person she assumes she will be. But this is not a Cinderella story, and Orla’s life is a mess when we meet her first (moving with her best friend Neema from Cheltenham to London), and things don’t really change as the narrative progresses. s highly trusting nature and seeing the best in people, being a bit oblivious and how the relationship with her room mate develops were spot on as a portrait of Irish people. Do you ever read something and instantly think this needs to be adapted into a series? Because that’s the case with The Mess We’re In!

The ending felt rushed, the best part of a book is the feeling of catharsis you get at the end. Which this book didn’t provide. I would’ve like to feel more a build towards the end, even if things still don’t end up wrapped up neatly with a bow (which is not what i expect of every book i read). Men are unfortunately the undoing of Neema and Orla’s close friendship. As Orla experiences and experiments with sexual freedom (Moses, Vinnie etc) Neema struggles with watching her friend be so free when she is having to live under such conservative boundaries depicted by her Indian family. And also, Orla is really really messy, which drives Neema crazy. I'm so sad it's over. I could have read another sixty chapters . . . A fantastic read' JOANNE MCNALLY Loved the characters in the pub she works at too. I can definitely chime with those older Irish men full of yearning and Guinness - I have plenty in my own family

The authors are well respected advocates for social and environmental justice. Active Hope is a thought provoking book that requires engagement from the reader. It's about expanding our view of ourselves and the world. My favorite quote from the book is from Arne Naess who wrote:

I just finished listening to this. Firstly, I loved the fact that Annie Mac read this. She has such a nice voice and clearly had a vision for how she wanted the story to get across. Terrified about the current volatile state of the western world? Anxiety levels high? Concerned about what is happening (or, for that matter, not happening) to our politics, society, culture? Then perhaps this book is ideal for you… Unhappily, the extensive moralizing within the ecological movement has given the public a false impression that they are being asked to make a sacrifice — to show more responsibility, more concern and a nicer moral standard. But all of that would flow naturally and easily if the self were widened and deepened so that protection of nature was felt and perceived as protection of our very selves."What [Macmanus has] managed to do with London, and what London means to different generations of Irish people, is terrific, and deeply moving’ RODDY DOYLE The Mess We’re In is set in Kilburn, north London, at the turn of the millennium. Twenty-one-year-old Dubliner Orla Quinn has moved to the city to pursue a career producing her music when women doing so was mostly unheard of. She moves into a squalid flat with a band on the rise, Shiva , and throws herself headfirst into the hedonistic partying and sleepless nights of her new tribe. A powerful and occasionally polemical appeal to reason in politics; if you're despairing in search of an antidote to the poison of "alternative facts", here's your book. Like any good political text, there's something here to offend everyone. You'll want to cheer, high-five and occasionally shout your disagreement, but what you won't want to do is put it down.' A book about finding home in a strange new place, and finding yourself when your life is a mess. The hotly anticipated second novel by the Sunday Times bestselling author of Mother Mother