April has been a month of ongoing sickness (nothing serious) and blogging has taken a bit of a back seat for me.
I’m trying to get back into the swing of things with some mini reviews of three contemporary Irish novels that I’ve read over the last few weeks.
Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan
I didn’t really get on with Megan Nolan’s debut Acts of Desperation but had high hopes for her follow-up. Ordinary Human Failings, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize but not shortlisted, is set mostly in the 1990s and tells the story of the Greens, a family of Irish immigrants who have moved to London in the hope of escaping the social stigma of daughter Carmel’s teenage pregnancy and her brother Ritchie’s growing dependency on alcohol. Judged harshly by their neighbours, the Greens, and particularly Carmel’s daughter Lucy, become scapegoats when a young child is found dead on their estate. When Lucy is taken into police custody, a tabloid journalist, Tom, sees his chance and sequesters the family in a hotel in the hope of uncovering a juicy story to make his career.
What follows is less a procedural exploring the guilt or otherwise of Lucy, and more an exploration into the lives of a family beset by poverty and intergenerational despair. While Ordinary Human Failings is well written, I felt that it didn’t really know what it wanted to be. It is part police procedural, part inditement of the tabloid culture of the 1990s and mostly solid family drama. To my mind, the tabloid angle was the most interesting, but was jettisoned midway for something less engaging and for me, the novel never quite comes together as a cohesive whole.
Habitat by Catriona Shine
Catriona Shine’s debut novel Habitat is a wonderfully unique, funny and unnerving exploration of communal living and personal responsibility. The book follows the seven residents of an apartment block in Oslo over the course of one surreal week as their residence begins to inexplicably disappear. The couple in the top apartment are startled to find rain coming in through their roof, while belongings and even dogs disappear from one apartment only to turn up in the apartment below. Three Indian tech workers living in the dingy basement can’t understand why their apartment floor is filling up with dirt and sound insulation is a thing of the past.
Chapters are titled for each of the seven days and in between, the apartment itself narrates its point of view. Part satire and part cautionary parable about climate change, Habitat is a wonderfully realised exploration of the way we live, enlivened by sharply drawn characters, great use of dark humour and an overall empathy for the human condition. It is a debut that stands out and marks Shine as a real talent to watch.
Seaborne by Nuala O’Connor
Nuala O’Connor has proved her worth as a chronicler of the lives of historical women. From Emily Dickenson in Miss Emily to Belle Bilton (Becoming Belle) and Nora Barnacle Joyce (Nora), she is a master at bringing vivid characters to colourful life. Seaborne only cements that reputation. She has taken the few facts known about Anne Bonny, a young woman tried for piracy in Jamaica in the 1720s and fashioned a sensuous and enthralling portrait of her life. In her telling, Anne is born in Kinsale and brought up as a boy to hide her illegitimacy. A move to America with her parents to life on a plantation does not suit the rebellious Anne, who struggles with social expectations and the constraints of her gender role. She finds comfort in a relationship with Bedelia, a slave girl on her father’s plantation, but the sea is too strong a pull and Anne eventually throws away security and family for a life on the sea and a passionate relationship with famous pirate Calico Jack Rackham.
O’Connor has created a wonderfully sympathetic character in Anne, whose passions and beliefs are so at odds with her time and her sex. Historical detail is convincing without being distracting and O’Connor’s sensuous, almost musical prose is a joy to read.