Within three months, she’s moved into his apartment. Yet for a woman who’s so untethered, Ava swiftly entangles herself with Julian, whom she meets in a bar.

She leaves behind her parents and two brothers in Dublin, but mentions no friends or real connections whom she’ll miss. When the novel opens, Ava has just arrived in Hong Kong, where she’s slated to teach English for a year. SEE ALSO: LA Ambition Rules in ‘Vagablonde,’ the Story of a Lawyer Who Dreams of Becoming a Rapper release on June 2, production company Black Bear Pictures announced it had optioned the rights to adapt the story into a TV show. and Ireland this April, and shortly before its U.S. The book debuted on the Sunday Times’ best-seller list at its release in the U.K. Through Ava’s stumblings, the 28-year-old Dolan reveals herself to be a precocious talent, skilled at detailing an expatriate’s experience teaching a language course and learning how to fall in love. She opted to write Ava as simultaneously vulnerable and closed off, observant and blind to her own shortcomings.

“I looked at Ava’s limitations and asked, how can I realistically navigate these dynamics?” Dolan recalled while speaking to Observer. While writing her debut novel Exciting Times, Irish author Naoise Dolan faced a major challenge with her 22-year-old narrator, Ava: How could she create a character who’s simultaneously engaging and emotionally repressed? As Ava navigates a love triangle between herself, a lawyer named Edith, and a banker named Julian, her failure to adequately examine and communicate her desires leads her into anxious, hurtful situations.

Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan