Tag Archives: secrets

#BookReview ‘Confessions’ by Catherine Airey @catherineairey #contemporaryfiction

Leave a reply

An emotional story of three generations of women moving back and forth between New York and the west of Ireland from 1970s to 2018. Confessions by Catherine Airey is an accomplished debut examining the changing freedoms of women fifty years apart, and the social mores and variations between two countries that speak the same language but are oh so different. Catherine AireyConfessions is a book about stories, secrets and confessions; the telling of stories and the keeping of secrets and about whether confessing your secrets is the right or wrong thing to do. The story starts in New York 2001 as the Twin Towers fall. Sixteen-year-old Cora Brady’s accountant father never comes home. She is left alone – her artist mother Máire having died years earlier – and disorientated, until a letter arrives from her Aunt Ró in Ireland. Before she leaves the city, Cora hangs posters of her father ‘Missing. Cantor Fitzgerald. 104th Floor, North Tower. Father’ in places she will miss.
Airey takes time to establish the character of Cora but as soon as the teeneager arrives in Ireland, the story switches to 1974 to tell the story of two sisters, Róisín and Máire. This is 1970s Ireland, strictly Catholic, setting up stark contrasts between Ireland and New York city at that time: the illegality of abortion, alcohol, sexual freedom, drugs and the coming of AIDS. Occasional references throughout are made to a ‘game’ which make no sense to me until three-quarters of the way through the novel.
Airey is particularly good at juxtaposing the expectations placed on her female characters, in different decades; by the women themselves, on each other and by society, to suffer, to put up with things, to make do, to stay silent. And conversely to let it all out, to scream, to admit the truth even when painful and uncomfortable to oneself or others.
By the end, for me the women merge into one homogenous character. Though the writing is beautiful – ‘I was too wired to even close my eyes, my thoughts wound up like swirls inside a marble’ – the loose plotting is at times disorientating and at times I forgot which woman was speaking. The anchoring point of time in this family’s story is the fall of the Twin Towers in 2001, the events leading to it and what happened afterwards. Airey takes us on a meander through the decades, showing events and their consequences. Stories are the things you present to other people, secrets are the things you never confess to another soul. Viewpoints switch around until the final quarter which is told largely in letter-form when uncomfortable truths are finally addressed. ‘We’re only as sick as our secrets,’ writes one to another.
I finished Confessions not sure if I enjoyed it or not; at times it focusses on distressing subjects, death, addiction, rape, abortion, betrayal, grief. At times it is beautiful. Sometimes I wanted to read on to know what happened next, but then I delayed picking it up again. Challenging. Unflinching.

If you like this, try:-
‘A Little Life’ by Hanya Yanagihara
‘Brooklyn’ by Colm Tóibín
‘Nora Webster’ by Colm Tóibín

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview CONFESSIONS by Catherine Airey @catherineairey https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-8SU via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Verity Bright

#BookReview ‘A Week in Paris’ by Rachel Hore @Rachelhore #mystery #WW2

4 Replies

I really enjoyed this book but can’t help feeling the title did it no favours. A Week in Paris by Rachel Hore is a story of hidden secrets, wartime Paris, resistance, collaboration, bravery and music. Because of the title I was expecting something more cosy and romantic; although there is a romantic strand to the story, this book is worth reading for so much more. Rachel HoreThe week in Paris in question happens in 1956 when teenager Fay goes on a school trip to Paris. Two significant things happen to her there. She meets a fanciable boy, Adam, and has a strange fainting episode triggered by the ringing of the bells at Notre Dame. Back home, she questions her mother Kitty who denies that Fay has ever been to Paris. But Fay cannot shake off the feelings of familiarity.
In 1961 Fay, now a professional violinist, has the chance to go to Paris for a series of performances. However her mother, always emotionally vulnerable, has taken an accidental overdose and is in St Edda’s Hospital. Before she leaves for Paris, Fay visits her mother who tells her to look at the bottom of a locked trunk at home. In it, Fay finds a small canvas rucksack. Attached to it is a label. On one side is written ‘Fay Knox, Southampton’, on the reverse, ‘Convent Ste-Cécile, Paris.’
‘She sat staring at the label for some time, while the faintest glimmer of a memory rose in her mind. Sunshine falling on flagstones, the blue robes of a statuette, and… but no, it was gone. It was as though a door had opened, just a chink, in her mind, before it shut again.’
The story is told in two strands, World War Two and afterwards, from the viewpoints of Kitty and Fay. Gradually the mysteries are unveiled. Fay has the unsettling feeling that her mother is keeping secrets, while Kitty knows she must some day explain everything to her daughter. For a long time, the reader keeps guessing.
In Paris, Fay sets off to find the convent mentioned on the label. There she slowly unravels the truth. How, despite denying to Fay that she has ever been to France, Kitty went to Paris in 1937 to study piano at the Conservatoire. What follows is an unveiling of a secret life during the Second World War, a time when Fay was a toddler, a time her mother told her they lived in a pretty cottage in Richmond. The real story of Kitty’s pre-war life in Paris, her meeting and love affair with Fay’s father Eugene, and what happened next, is fascinating. Again, Fay experiences feelings of déjà vu but this time she is old enough to seek the answers. She never imagined the truth she discovers.
I found myself picking up the book at every opportunity, just to read another couple of pages. It is a fascinating study of wartime secrets being kept from the next generation, not in an attempt to deny but as a way of pushing away the pain, grief and shame of what happened in an occupied city.

Click the title to read my reviews of other books by Rachel Hore:-
A BEAUTIFUL SPY
ONE MOONLIT NIGHT
THE HIDDEN YEARS
THE LOVE CHILD

If you like this, try these:-
‘The Ballroom’ by Anna Hope
‘The Book of Lies’ by Mary Horlock
‘In Another Life’ by Julie Christine Johnson

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview A WEEK IN PARIS by @Rachelhore http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2RH via @SandraDanby