FINDING MR. FLOOD

TITLE: FINDING MR. FLOOD
AUTHOR: CIARA GERAGHTY
Pages: 546
Date: 08/04/2011
Grade: 4.5
Own

Sometimes you read a book and the characters in it become your friends. You get to know them as you read their story, and you grow fonder of them with ever page you turn. So fond in fact, that you dread having to say goodbye when their story finishes. You don't want them to go away and long to keep them near. You want to still be with them after the issue(s) they have been dealing with in the story have been resolved, just to make sure that they will be as safe and happy as the ending of the book seems to promise.
Finding Mr. Flood is one of those books for me.

The book introduces Dara Flood to the reader. A young woman with a rather uneventful life. In fact, the most exciting thing that ever happened to her took place 13 days before she was born when her father, Mr. Flood, walked up the road to buy cigarettes and never came back.
Since then she has happily lived her life in the shadow of her beautiful, unstoppable and charming older sister, Angel. Dara's life is predictable and safe, and that is exactly the way she likes it.
When Angel gets sick though and it proves very hard to find the donor kidney she needs, everything changes. Angel, who has always been optimistic about her situation sinks into a depression, and Dara decides that she needs to find their father to find out if he could help the daughter he abandoned.
To help her she hires Stanley Flinter, a private detective who had hoped to become a policeman and is struggling with the aftermath of a relationship that went wrong in the most horrible way possible.
Mr. Flood however had good reasons to disappear, and proves elusive.
The quest forces Dara to start living life rather then endure it, to take chances rather then play it save and to embrace opportunities as they come along.
There were so many reasons to love this book that it is hard to know where to start.
Ciara Geraghty has given us characters who are both real and quirky and placed them in a situation that is seriously worrying and yet leaves lots of room for smiles and laugh out loud moments. She has produced a story that is realistic without being predictable. And she has given me good and compelling reasons to go and find her earlier books and read them.
I've read other reviews of Geraghty's work in which she was compared to Marian Keyes. Although I can see why those reviewers would say that, I don't entirely agree. Keyes has never been able to make me care about her characters as much as I did about Dara and the others (both human and canine) in this book. In that respect I'd be more inclined to compare her to Maeve Binchy whose characters usually turn into personal friends for me as well.
Of course there was the added bonus of having parts of the book set in Bailieborough, the town where I work as a librarian. In fact, the library is next door to the shop of John-Ed, the butcher whose burgers are mentioned in the acknowledgments. And best of all, next week (Saturday April 16), Ciara Geraghty will be visiting that library in Bailieborough for a reading from this book. I can't wait to meet her and congratulate her on this wonderful work of fiction.