He mostly forgoes quotation marks, fashioning lyrical sentences featuring multiple speakers. Like Ryan's previous fiction, it's attuned to the beauty of English as spoken in Ireland.
With absorbing subplots about the collapse of the so-called Celtic Tiger economic boom and neighboring Northern Ireland's sectarian fighting, this book might be called a historical novel of the recent past. Saoirse loses a close friend to suicide and, after a one-night stand, gets pregnant with a daughter who might never meet her father. A stranger "could not be blamed for supposing them to be mortal enemies."Īcross the late 20 th and early 21 st centuries, the Aylwards struggle to preserve their pugilistic spirit amid great sorrow. When Mary implies that her daughter-in-law isn't a great mother, Eileen threatens "to strangle her, to suffocate her, to drown her, to shoot her, to take her to the" veterinarian. The adults' conversations are packed with dark comic insults. Each of the novel's roughly 100 chapters is two pages long, a user-friendly structure that beckons to those who claim they're too busy to read.Īfter the first-chapter death of her husband, Eileen grows more protective of her young daughter Saoirse, and forms a resilient bond with her mother-in-law Mary. Though a number of obstacles stand in her way, Eileen Aylward is due to inherit a tiny freshwater island in her hometown, "a village that nobody'd ever heard of." Her life story is eventful and efficiently told.
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