A Wiser Girl

a wiser girl follows Jo Nowd with her broken heart and suitcase full of paints as she begins her odyssey to Italy. Coming from a background where house painters are more common than painters, she entertains wild hopes of turning herself into an artist andwoman of the world. Simple yet profound and told with lots of humour, it delves into life’s paradoxes – body versus soul, art versus action, sex versus love. Set it 1975, on the eveof the second wave of feminism, Jo’s a precursor to the promises of freedom it heralded. Jo’s soul also yearns for something deeper and her love for the exquisite beauty of medieval Siennese paintings which runs like a golden thread through the novel leads her on a journey of discovery and a year of unexpected revelations.\r\n\r\nMoya’s first novel The Long Way Home was described in the Irish Times as “simply brilliant”. Writer Elaine Feeney has described her latest novel as “an absolute page-turner … written with a poet’s eye and ear … a love song to the journey of an individual taking the reader on a vibrant and rousing journey”. Author Mary Morrissy called it “normal people for a different generation”.