*3.5 stars*

“I had dreams once, but never for anything as extravagant as happiness. Still, Auntie Bell and me have fresh cream cakes every Saturday. They're sweet enough to take the edge off. I hope they're enough to get me through being outed as a fraud. Turns out, I'm more my missing mother's daughter than anyone first suspected”.

Lindy Morris and auntie Bell live on the outskirts of Granda Morris’s farmland in Ballyglen, Ireland, as far away from his own farmhouse as he could put them. He and uncle Malachi built the flimsy little bungalow as cheaply as possible, and filled it with nasty old furniture that was only fit to be thrown out, but Granda Morris says they’re lucky to get even that as he “hates the bloody fucking women”!

There was a time when Lindy managed to escape the confines of her miserable life, when she was training to be a nurse in London. There were friends and boozy nights out, moonlit walks beside the mighty Thames, the lights reflecting on the water, making it all look quite magical. But then she ended up back in Ballyglen, and decades later she’s still there.

Tish Delaney presents the minutiae of small lives in such an evocative way, that you can actually imagine you’re living that life. The Morris’s are a completely dysfunctional family, and this was a time (and a place) when the head of the family dictated your everyday life, particularly so for the women of the family, who weren’t allowed an opinion, they literally had no voice, and were way down in the pecking order.

I have to admit to feeling irritated by fact that Lindy returned to her life of misery and constraints, although of course this is my view looking at it from a different period in history, and coloured by the very opposite way in which I was raised myself. I have to accept the fact that this was just how it was in rural Ireland at that particular time - this was the norm. A man could be as cruel and as brutal as he wished, and no one ever questioned it! Though it’s quite a sad and depressing storyline, it did have some amusing moments to lighten the gloom, and was extremely well written.

Not a misery memoir, but it comes close, saved by a gritty humour and lots of twists. Where did humanity go wrong when the child is blamed for the sins of the parent? This is the Ireland of war and religion, of women who are saints or sinners, of small town gossip and miserable weather. The patriarchal monster who blights the lives of the ‘wimmin’ in his, is granda Morris, raging war on useless women and waiting for a male heir, which it is too late for. Lindy and her aunt are holed up together in isolated mutual discontent, looking back on loss and at the mercy of their tormentor.
I found this a compelling story, the language at once gritty but funny, the characters are a wonderful list of the typical and unexpected, as the plot takes the reader back and forth in the Lindy story. Well worth sticking with.

I found this a difficult book to review as it’s so well written, however I personally found it a bit of a depressing read and in parts it was a bit too lengthy. Just not a book for me.

As usual in my reviews, I will not rehash the plot...

This was a "mixed bag" read for me, as overall I found it made me feel quite downcast.

The writing is excellent, evocative, descriptive, filled with touches of wry humour, and "pulls" feelings out of you. At the same time, parts of the book are purely brutal - but from what I can gather, seem to paint an accurate picture of how "unmarried mothers" and their unfortunate offspring were treated (and indeed may still be treated) in the UK and Ireland, even by their own families.

I couldn't help but feel sympathy for the way Lindy and Bell lived their very small lives - but at the same time I was baffled as to why anyone would put up with (let alone return to) such circumstances, when there were clearly avenues of escape available!

The story picks up a lot in the second half of the book. The overall feeling I had in the second half is how the past, and what we are told of the past, can entirely influence our view, shrouding the truth with evasions and white lies. Finding out the truth can give one courage to face the past, change the present, and look to the future. An optimistic ending.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC. All opinions my own.

I struggled with this book. The idea is good and it has some great dialogue but I found it rather long-winded and slow in parts. I didn't really warm to it I'm afraid.

There was a time when Lindy Morris escaped to London and walked along the Thames in the moonlight. When life was full and exciting.

Decades later, Lindy lives back with her Auntie Bell on the edge: on the edge of Donegal and on the edge of Granda Morris's land. Granda Morris is a complicated man, a farmer who wanted sons but got two daughters: Auntie Bell and Lindy's mother, who disappeared long ago.

Now, Lindy and Bell live the smallest of lives, in a cottage filled with unfulfilled dreams. But when the secrets they have kept for thirty years emerge, everything is rewritten. Will Lindy grasp who she is again?

An atmospheric, taut thriller which keeps you hooked from the first page!

Lindy and her aunt Bell live in a bungalow on the edge of Granda Morris’ land. They suffer each other as there is no alternative, each of them hating Granda Morris in their own way.

This is the story of Lindy Morris. Life has been hard for her, and she has had her fair share of heartache. The book alternates between Lindy as a young woman, finding her feet in London away from the constrictions and constraints of her home in rural Northern Ireland, and up to date Lindy, now in her 50s with lots of regrets and not a few mental issues.

There are some absolute gems in this book (“you’re skatin’ on very thin ice my girl!”“aye, but at least I’m skatin’!” is one of my favourites!) and the descriptive narrative is excellent, but it took so long for anything to actually happen that it lost its way for me. When Kieron and Herself turn up the story really gets going and I loved the ending.

A book of two halves, second half is so much better than the torment of the first half.

Thank you NetGalley.

A troubling read about a seriously dysfunctional family . I found the story to be baffling at first as to why Lindy lived as she did and I almost gave up reading as her whole predicament irritated me. I stuck it out to the end as I had too many unanswered questions to put it down but I can’t say it was my favourite book of the year. That said, it’s very well written and you can visualise the sadness and dreariness of her situation.