This came very close to being good, but not close enough, and by the time I got to the end I was starting to get annoyed with it.
You can certainly play Irish Fiction Bingo with the story-line: Cold harsh farm, cold harsh mammy, copious cups of tea, teenage fall from grace, dark brooding man, dark brooding Catholicism, The Troubles, family rifts and multiple babies. It starts well but seems to lose its way somewhere around the half way point.
Mary Rattigan has a hard life as a child living in the cold wet farmlands of Northern Ireland. Her mean-spirited and abusive mother slaps her down at every turn and her father simply looks the other way and slips out the back door rather than stand up to his wife in her anger. Despite all this, Mary does well at school and hopes one day to marry her long-term boyfriend, the doctor's son, and escape far away to America.
It wouldn't be an Irish novel if all this went according to plan, and of course it doesn't, and Mary's life falls prey to injustice, Catholic niceties and her Mother's interference. As the book is set in Northern Ireland, and begins in the 1970s, the author ties in some real historical events associated with The Troubles, and although this does give context, it is only ever as a backdrop to the main story and not always relevant to what is going on. I thought some elements of the story were engineered to allow another piece of history to be slotted in.
I also had an issue with the writing around two counts of sexual assault, which left me feeling that the writer was in some ways excusing the actions of the men involved, and this was what annoyed me about the novel. It is too big a topic for me to tackle in a few paragraphs so I'll leave it but, even if some things are said in character, I think writers should not leave young women with any room for doubt in these matters.
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