ACADEMY STREET by Mary Costello

ACADEMY STREET by Mary Costello

Pages: 179

Date: March 20, 2015

Grade: 3.5

Details: Reading Group Read

Library

The blurb:

‘With extraordinary devotion, Mary Costello brings to life a woman who would otherwise have faded into oblivion amid the legions of the meek and the unobtrusive.’

J.M. Coetzee

Academy Street is the heart-breaking and evocative story of one woman’s life spanning six decades. Tess’s childhood in 1940’s rural Ireland is defined by the sudden death of her mother. Later, in New York, she encounters the ferocious power and calamity of love, and the effects of catastrophic fate. The novel resonates with the rhythms of memory and home as well as those of America’s greatest city.

This is an intimate story about unexpected gifts and unbearable losses, and the perpetual ache for belonging. It is exquisitely written and profoundly moving.

My thoughts:

I’m not entirely sure what to say about this book. It was short and it was easy enough to read. There were moments and sentences that made me pause. And yet, as a reading experience this book and the story in it left me cold. I didn’t really care about Tess’s life and everything that (doesn’t) happen to her because to me it seemed as if the author, purposefully, kept me at a distance; as if she didn’t want me to get too involved in Tess’s life. Of course, 177 pages is not a lot when you’re telling a story spanning seven decades. On the other hand, even the incidents in her life that were related in more detail seemed to be purposefully kept vague.

Reading this book, to me felt a bit like watching a documentary in which all the facts were stated without too much attention to detail or the emotions associated with those details.

The reader follows Tess through her life. The first part of the book deals with Tess’s childhood. We first meet her age seven, when her mother dies. We are with her as she goes to school, boarding school, hospital in Galway and Dublin to train as a nurse. We subsequently follow Tess to America where she falls in love for the first time ever and acts on the emotion. While a relationship with the man in question is never on the cards, she does end up with a life-long commitment as a result of her one-night-stand.

This book seemed intent on tripping me up. We get a lot of detail about seemingly insignificant details - for example, why did we need to know about the rat and the teenager trying to get it out of the hole it flees into? When I read the scene I thought it might have significance later on in the story, however if it did, I missed it.

I really wasn’t happy about what happened to Theo. I can’t help feeling this particular event has become the ‘go-to’ climax when an author needs a dramatic conclusion or plot development and I for one am getting a bit tired of it by now.

Having said all of the above, there were a few sentences and descriptions in this book which made me stop and think.

“And his sorrow, for all that is lost, lying silent within him.” - Tess when she cuts her father’s hair.

“Being among people left her feeling lonely, even, at times, endangered. She felt divided from others. Their talk, their dreams seemed to her incidental, artificial, something that had to be got through en route to the real conversation, the heart of the matter.”

Chapter eleven: The lines that sum up the book for me: In the telling it did not seem so bad. She even laughed at times. It was not that it was funny, but neither was it tragic. It was as if she were recounting someone else’s life, from long ago.”

“There did not seem to be enough hours or days or years left in her life to read all she wanted to read.”

“Oh, honey, when it comes to the heart, it ain’t about men or women, but people.” - Willa

Overall this was an easy read, containing a few moments of pure genius, which left me mildly dissatisfied by the time I finished it.

THE SPINNING HEART

THE SPINNING HEART by Donal Ryan

Pages: 156

Date:  27/10/2014

Grade: 4-

Details: Reading Group Read

Library

The blurb:

“My father still lives back the road past the weir in the cottage I was reared in. I go there every day to see is he dead and every day he lets me down. He hasn’t yet missed a day of letting me down.”

In the aftermath of Ireland’s financial collapse, dangerous tensions surface in an Irish town. As violence flares, the characters face a battle between public persona and inner desires. Through a chorus of unique voices, each struggling to tell their own kind of truth, a single authentic tale unfolds.

The Spinning Heart speaks for contemporary Ireland like no other novel. Wry, vulnerable, all-too human, it captures the language and spirit of rural Ireland and with uncanny perception articulates the words and thoughts of a generation. Technically daring and evocative of Patrick McCabe and J.M. Synge, this novel of small-town life is witty, dark and sweetly poignant.

Winner of the Guardian First Book Award 2013

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2013

Winner of Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards 2012

My thoughts:

Gosh, I’m not quite sure what to make of this book. It contains rather sad and depressing, although insightful and sharp, snapshots of the lives of inhabitants of a small village in the west of Ireland. The area has gone from riches to rags after the fraudulent local builder who provided the jobs and prosperity, goes broke and flees the country. These people suffer in similar yet very individual ways through the recession following the building boom.

The character’s stories are bleak. There is no real hope, nothing to look forward to and no solution in sight. On top of and compounded by the economic doom are the personal issues these characters deal with; guilt, depression, confusion, desperation, lack of love, loneliness, the list goes on and on and not a single characters appears to be happy.

Of course this town is a microcosm of Ireland. The stories show how individual actions affect a whole community in sometimes surprising and unexpected ways. They also point how even in the midst of a group of people we have known all our lives we can be completely alone and isolated. As such it is very clever and very well written; all these characters have their own voice and their own issues, even if they all stem from the same source. I admire how the author managed to tell several tales through the eyes and mouths of twenty characters all of whom only have one (shortish) chapter dedicated to them. I’m impressed that twenty different voices managed to result in one coherent story. Unfortunately my admiration for Donal Ryan’s skill doesn’t result in affection for the book he’s written.

I prefer my stories character driven rather than event driven. The glimpses of lives I got were not enough to satisfy my curiosity. Not that I felt I wasn’t given all the information I needed to follow the story; I think it was all there. What I needed in this book and didn’t get was just one happy section; for one character whose life wasn’t filled with pain or despair. They say ‘bad news sells’ and this book feels as if it’s trying to prove that rule. For me though bad news only leaves an impression if it’s contrasted by good news. Only blackness renders me almost blind to what I’m reading and the messages I’m supposed to find in the words.

I can’t help feeling the author took every issue known to men and decided to put them all in one, 156 pages long, book. While it gives us some beautiful scenes and touching quotes, it also leaves us overwhelmed by the misery of it all.

“You’re some fool, she said with her eyes. I know I am, my red cheeks said back.”

“She saw more in me than I knew there was.” - Bobby about his wife Triona

“I don’t care, though, if he can never feel the same pride in me that I know he used to. I just want him to remember how he loved me. I want him to know I’m still his little girl.” Mags, after she’s come out to her parents.

To summarize: this book is well written with the numerous individual voices clear and distinct. It is also very clever in that it tells a full story from an almost endless amount of angles in such a way the reader isn’t really aware how it all connects until they are nearing the end of the book. However, none of that mitigates the fact this is a very depressing tale.

IF YOU WERE ME

IF YOU WERE ME by Sheila O’Flanagan

 

Pages: 389

Date: 15/09/2014

Grade: 3.5

Details: Reading Group Read

            Book received from Headline Review

            Through New Books Magazine

Library

The blurb:

“Carlotta O'Keefe is happily engaged, and the wedding plans are coming together. She's clear about her future path, both personally and in her busy career. Maybe Chris doesn't make her heart race every time she sees him, but you can't have that feeling for ever. Can you?

Then, on a trip to Seville, Carlotta runs into Luke Evans. Luke broke her heart so long ago she'd almost convinced herself she'd forgotten him. Now, he's not that boy any more, but an attractive and intriguing man. And he can explain everything that happened way back when. Suddenly Carlotta's not so sure of anything any more.”

My thoughts:

This probably wasn’t the book for me. I liked the idea behind the story – two people who’d fallen in love as teenagers before being ruthlessly torn apart, reconnecting almost two decades later – but wasn’t overly impressed with the execution.

While I understand this is the story of Carlotta’s journey I still felt we saw too little of Luke Evans to make the premise believable. I know that first loves leave a lasting impression. I had no issue buying into Carlotta staying mildly obsessed with Luke over the years given the abrupt and unexpected separation years ago and the revelations afterwards. I didn’t even have a problem with her wanting to cancel her marriage because meeting Luke again made her doubt her feelings for her fiancé, Chris. In fact, that made sense. If it takes as little as one accidental meeting with an old flame and one passionate kiss to doubt whether or not you want to marry the man you’re engaged to, you are better off cancelling the whole affair. The only thing I did have a major issue with, was the ease with which she also allows her precious career to fall by the wayside after she meets Luke in Spain for the second time. She doesn’t know anymore about the man he’s become than she did at the start of the book and yet she throws her whole life upside down on the gamble he still resembles the boy she fell in love with as a teenager. It didn’t make sense and didn’t appear to fit the Carlotta I had gotten to know while reading the book.

I thought it was a shame the reader wasn’t given the opportunity to get to know Luke better. It might have been easier to suspend disbelieve and buy Carlotta’s change of heart and life if we’d been given a better idea of who and what exactly Luke was.

The story dragged for me at times. While I get what the author was doing; giving us a blow by blow account of a woman in her thirties reassessing her life and everything she’s held to be true up until then, I got a big bogged down by all the detail at times. In fact, the first 270 or so pages of this book all appear to be an introduction to a dramatic escalation of events. Suddenly everything happens at once, and while Carlotta’s break up with Chris was credible, the sudden implosion of her relationship with her best friend Sive seemed over the top and unrealistic. I guess it made perfect sense from a dramatic – turn the story on its head sort of – point of view, but it didn’t seem to fit the friendship they had until that moment and appeared to come out of nowhere. Just as what Sive did next, didn’t sit right with me and didn’t appear to add anything to the story either.

Anybody reading this review would be forgiven for thinking I didn’t like the book at all. And yet, that isn’t quite right either. As I said, I liked the idea behind the story. I enjoyed watching Carlotta slowly but carefully working out the priorities in her life. If You Were Me is a well written book and very easy to read (although it was equally easy to put down at times). Maybe it is just that I want more interaction between the two characters who will be the happy couple by the end of the book, while I’m reading the story. Or maybe it was just because I didn’t really warm to Carlotta.

Don’t allow my review to put you off. If you’ve read and enjoyed Sheila O’Flanagan books before, you will probably love this one too. If you’re a fan of Irish ‘women’s fiction’ this book will be right up your street. It just wasn’t quite up mine.

UNRAVELLING OLIVER

TITLE: UNRAVELLING OLIVER

AUTHOR: LIZ NUGENT

Pages: 240

Date: 07/03/2014

Grade: 4+

Details: Received from Penguin Ireland

Own

The blurb:

“'I expected more of a reaction the first time I hit her.'

Oliver Ryan is a handsome and charismatic success story. He lives in the leafy suburbs with his wife, Alice, who illustrates his award-winning children's books and gives him her unstinting devotion. Their life together is one of enviable privilege and ease - enviable until, one evening after supper, Oliver attacks Alice and puts her into a coma.

In the aftermath, as everyone tries to make sense of his astonishing act of savagery, Oliver tells his story. So do those whose paths he has crossed over five decades. What unfolds is a story of shame, envy, breath-taking deception and masterful manipulation.

Only Oliver knows the lengths to which he has had to go to get the life to which he felt entitled. But even he is in for a shock when the past catches up with him.”

--------------------------------------------------------------

What a way to start a book:

‘I expected more of a reaction the first time I hit her.'

And it sets exactly the right tone for this book. This story is really a mystery, although not one in which we anxiously read on to find out who perpetrated the crime. No, the big question in this book is what on earth possessed Oliver to beat up his wife. The answer to that question is revealed at a slow, almost leisurely pace.

This book is told by Oliver as well as several people he has encountered during his life. Oliver tells his story after he has been arrested for putting his wife into a coma and doesn’t, at any time, try to make himself look or sound nice.

“I’m aware that I am not the easiest of people. Alice has told me so. I have no friends, for example. I used to, many years ago, but that really didn’t work out. We drifted apart and I let them go – voluntarily, I suppose. Friends are just people who remind you of your failings.”

Having said that, if you ignore the very first chapter, in which Oliver rather coolly describes how he hit his wife and his surprise at his own action and the lack of reaction on her part, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot wrong with him.

“My wife had finally brought out the worst in me. It was most unexpected. I had always been fond of her, in my way.”

For a long time it was almost possible to feel sorry for Oliver and the life he lived before he got famous. In fact, that is probably the only thing that stopped this book from getting five stars; I fully expected to be horrified by Oliver by the time I reached the end of the book, and I wasn’t. I didn’t like him, didn’t approve of the things he’d done and couldn’t sympathize with him, but he never quite turned into the monster I was expecting him to be either. And, to be honest, I’m not sure if that is a missed opportunity on the author’s part or a very clever and balanced portrait of a socially unadjusted personality.

Having said that, this was one of the more fascinating and well plotted books I’ve read this year so far. I got completely caught up in the story and had to keep on reading in order to find out what had caused this man to turn violent. The writing in this book is very good. I was impressed with the very distinctive voices the various narrators had. For example, Veronique, the French lady, sounded distinctly French, even if her story was told in English.

Ultimately this is a story about secrets and the damage they can do, both to those who can’t find the answers they need and to those who are hurt as a result of that. This was a very impressive debut by an author I will be keeping an eye on from now on.