Set in rural Ireland in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, Sunburn follows Lucy, assumed to be on the road to marriage and kids with her neighbour and best friend, Martin.
Lucy is fifteen in 1989, one of a group of girls tightly bound by friendship, fraught with all the worries and pitfalls of adolescence. She desperately needs to fit in, to ignore the troubling feelings she has for Susannah while daring to hope those feelings are requited. By the end of the summer it’s clear that they are but while Susannah wants their love made public Lucy is terrified of coming out. Then something happens which forces her to make a decision one way or the other.
Lucy tells us her story, full of the passion of first love and the terror of being discovered in a town alert to any non-conformity and judgemental of it. Howarth’s depiction of claustrophobic village life where everyone knows everyone else’s business is convincing. The small kindnesses doled out to Susannah, emotionally and physically neglected by her mother, are balanced by the closed mindedness of Lucy’s friends and family. Faced with the possibility of ostracism, her solution is both painful and selfish, although perhaps understandable. Howarth’s novel is not without flaws – I found it overlong and a little florid at times – but overall, it’s an enjoyable coming-of-age story which left me hoping things were easier these days for the Lucys of this world.