Confessions

The blurb for Catherine Airey’s Confessions promises an involving tale of two Irish sisters, one of whom emigrates to New York to take up an art school scholarship ticking two of my literary boxes. Máire and Rósín’s stories span several decades beginning in the 1970s when they’re growing up in an Irish village not far from the house which one will paint and the other will eventually live in, making it the setting for a choose-your-own-adventure computer video game.
It opens in 2001 with Máire’s daughter before winding back to her sister Rósín in the ‘70s and ending with Máire’s granddaughter in 2023 after passing the narrative baton back and forth. Each section is prefaced with a scenario from Scream School, the computer video game which Rósín wrote based on the stories she and her sister wove around the house they were fascinated by. Airey smoothly unfolds this complicated, puzzle of a story, pieces of which click satisfyingly into place, largely through the distinctive voices of its female characters, exploring a multitude of themes along the way. To say more about the plot would be to ruin it. There’s a coincidence that may irritate some, but I was so immersed by then that I was more than happy to continue the ride. A long, intricately plotted, luxurious read, perfect for long evenings in January when it’s due to be published

A family saga which gripped my heart and refused to let go.

The novel opens with Cora, a teenage girl who has just found out that her father has been killed in the September 11 attacks. Her mother having already died, she has now been rendered an orphan, and has received a letter from her mother's sister in Ireland, inviting Cora to live with her.

From there, we go back in time to the 70s, to Cora's mother Maire and her sister Roisin. Of all the compelling protagonists (Cora, Maire, Roisin and, later, Cora's daughter Lyca) it's Roisin who touched me the most. At her heart, she is simply a good girl who wants to do right by her family and herself. Maire bullies her and later takes up with a young man named Michael, whose presence changes Roisin's fate as well.

Next, we come to Maire's story, ass he arrives in New York to study. This aspect of the novel is unremittingly tragic. Three men enter Maire's life, one after the other, sending a wrecking ball through her life. This was the hardest section in the book for me, and the author handles issues of consent so sensitively. We are also made privy to the situation back home in Ireland, as Roisin and Michael struggle to navigate through a life without Maire.

After this, we lurch forward to the 2010s for our final protagonist, Lyca, who is looking back and trying to figure out what really happened to her mother, grandmother and great-aunt, and the impact this has had on her life. Without spoiling too much, this focusses very much on the history of reproductive rights in Ireland.

As a woman, this novel will make you angry. The injustices that befall these women simply for the fact that they are female will boil your blood. But this will also leave you with hope and belief in the strength women gain from themselves and with each other.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and Penguin General UK for the ARC!

This book is due to be published in Jan 2025. Many thanks to the publishers, Penguin and Viking, and to Netgalley, for a free review copy, in exchange for my honest unedited feedback.
I love a book that just dives straight in. This one opens with a bang, literally.

We meet Cora living in NYC with her father. It is September 11th, 2001. Cora has skipped school and grew impatient waiting for her drug dealer boyfriend to call around, so she drops some acid. Then she switches on the TV and sees the attack on the Twin Towers, where her father is working. A new perspective on ‘where were you when….’

[As a sidebar, I enjoyed the detailed descriptions of the interior of the towers, triggering memories of my own visits there and eating at the ‘Windows of the World’ restaurant. There were 99 elevators in each! Sometimes the water in the toilet bowels was not level, as the towers swayed on their foundation.]

The book follows three women across three generations slipping between NYC and rural Ireland; Cora, Roisin (her aunt) and Lyca (her daughter). Cora seemed lonely in her life; she feels unseen. We learn Cora’s deceased mother Maire was an artist with mental health issues. This takes us to Maires backstory in Ireland where she was not at all nice to her sister Roisin. Through Maires later experiences in NYC, we learn danger is not where you would expect it and there are quite some unexpected shocks and twists.

There are many strong secondary characters, Franny, Scarlett and of course Michael. The book also covers those years in Ireland where abortion and homosexuality remained illegal or frowned upon. There is a scene where Cora put a t-shirt on her baby Lyca saying, “I should have been a choice”, and took her to a pro-abortion march. Gosh!

It is a complex but highly engaging family saga masterfully delivered. I could not put this book down!

New York, September 2001

"The voices became screams when the North Tower fell too. I turned off the TV and closed my eyes, covered my ears with my hands and thought about how ostriches bury their heads in the sand."

Cora Brady is home alone when live news coverage from the Twin Towers brings with it the realisation that her father won't be coming home. A heartbreaking start that gripped and led me straight into this immersive and beautifully written novel.

Originally from County Donegal in Ireland her mother had come to New York to attend art school and her father a childhood sweetheart had followed some years later. With both parents now dead Cora takes up her aunt Rosin's invitation and travels to Ireland.

Moving back and forth in time between rural Ireland and New York, this multi-generational novel tells of two sisters growing up in the 70's on a farm in rural Ireland, the different paths that led to them being separated by an ocean and the nearby house that had such a big impact on both their lives.

A slow burn, immersive and beautifully descriptive novel of family, friendship, choices and what might have been.